Toucan Keep a Secret

by Donna Andrews

  Actually, once he’d lost himself in a book, Dr. Womble probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to a five-alarm fire or a major earthquake. So while I wasn’t sure “wonderful powers of concentration” was the term I’d use, I had to agree that being a Key Holder was apt to have been even harder in his day.

  “Sounds like a useful system,” I said. “Why did we do away with it?”

  “Perhaps Robyn thought it was something we’d implemented as a way of coping with Dr. Womble’s charming eccentricities,” Mother said. “Something that shouldn’t be necessary with an energetic young rector at the helm.”

  More likely Robyn, faced with a congregation who were not entirely thrilled at having her replace their beloved rector, had set out to prove to the doubters what a dynamo she was. As someone who had trouble learning to delegate, I could totally understand her motivation. But …

  “Maybe it’s time to reintroduce the Key Holder system, then,” I said. “Because even if we were okay with Robyn continuing to run herself ragged, she has other responsibilities now, ones that are just as important as the parish.”

  “Precisely,” Mother said. “And everyone I’ve talked to is in favor of the idea, so if you like you can start calling yourself a Key Holder. I’ve put it on the agenda for the next vestry meeting. Along with the special election to replace poor dear Mr. Hagley.”

  I found myself wondering if hearing Mother refer to him as “poor dear Mr. Hagley” could possibly cause Hagley to roll over in—well, not his grave, since he was still down at the funeral home. To roll over in whatever Morton’s kept their clients in until the police gave the go-ahead for the cremation and funeral.

  I could always ask Maudie.

  But later. The Eagles took the field, the first Flying Fox batter stepped up to the plate, and we all put aside other worries to enjoy the game.

  At least most of us did. During the bottom of the fifth inning, the chief stepped away from the bleachers to take another phone call, and then after a quick word with his wife, strode rapidly over to his car and drove away.

  I probably wasn’t the only grown-up who had trouble concentrating after that. Was there a break in the case? Or some new and possibly unrelated crime?

  Chapter 18

  I shoved my worries aside and cheered the Eagles on to a 7–5 victory.

  After the game, Michael and I saw the boys safely off in Mason’s mother’s car. Then he headed back to the college for a rehearsal—he had a large role in a student-directed production of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, a particularly gory and melodramatic Elizabethan play. I headed over to Robyn’s house. Mother followed, carrying Cordelia. I’d have given my grandmother a ride, but when she saw the mess the boys had created when they’d thrown their baseball gear into the Twinmobile, she opted for the more civilized transportation experience available in Mother’s impeccably maintained sedan.

  And for the next several hours we worked on clearing out Robyn and Matt’s office-turned-bedroom. What amazed me most was how much of the clutter wasn’t even really theirs. We found boxes of papers from various long-past church projects and committees that people had dropped off because they no longer wanted to give the stuff houseroom. Books lent to Robyn by people under the misguided impression that she’d have plenty of time to read them, since obviously the clergy had a flurry of activity on Sunday and spent the rest of the week loitering about having virtuous thoughts. Boxes of things belonging to several of Matt’s artist friends who were either currently between lodgings or had been at some point in the last few years. We even collected an entire box of things Dr. Womble had left behind at Trinity that Robyn had been meaning to return to him when she had the time.

  “I’ll take charge of that box,” I said.

  “You don’t have to,” Robyn said. “It will be nice to have an excuse to visit him when I’m up on my feet again.”

  “I’m sure you can find some other excuse,” I said. “Always plenty of church topics you could ask his advice on. But I need an excuse to visit him now.”

  “Be my guest, then,” Robyn said.

  Although I wasn’t going to give Dr. Womble the box until I had a chance to inspect its contents, because I’d already noticed an exceedingly interesting item—an unopened letter addressed to Dr. Womble at the church’s address. In the top left corner of the envelope were the initials AvdL, along with an address in someplace called Barking Tree, Virginia.

  A few minutes later I made a trip to the bathroom so I could look up Barking Tree on a state map without having to make long explanations. It was in Lee County, the westernmost county in Virginia—in fact, most if not all of Lee County was farther west than the entire state of West Virginia, and it had a population of less than 25,000—would that mean Archie would be easy to find? Or would Barking Tree turn out to be one of those places that closed ranks against outsiders? Of course, if that was the case, Archie would also be an outsider, even if he’d moved there several decades ago after getting out of prison.

  I noted with interest that the county contained a high-security federal prison. Could that account for Archie’s presence there? No—the address I remembered from the envelope seemed to correspond with something called The Inchness Center—whose website revealed that it provided caring, individualized treatment in a peaceful rural setting for individuals with substance abuse issues.

  “Aha!” I exclaimed—but quietly.

  “Meg, dear,” Mother called. “Are you all right?”

  I flushed the toilet and returned to the decluttering.

  A little while later my phone rang. I glanced down at it. A local number, though not a familiar one. But I could think of any number of people who might be trying to reach me for reasons related to recent events at Trinity, so I answered it anyway.

  “Meg?” A familiar voice. “It’s Maudie Morton down at the funeral home. Are you still looking to talk to Chuck Hagley? That’s Junius and Dorothy Hagley’s son.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Then you might want to come down here quick. The chief’s interviewing him right now over in my arrangements room.”

  “Right now? I could have sworn the chief told me he was interviewing Mr. Hagley tomorrow.”

  “I gather that was the plan,” Maudie said. “Originally Mr. Hagley was going to stay over at his parents’ house and talk to the chief in the morning, but I gather now he’s planning to drive back to Richmond tonight.”

  “Bet the chief was annoyed.”

  “Yes. So if you hurry you might be able to catch Mr. Hagley before he goes.”

  “I’ll be over as soon as I can, then. Thanks.”

  “Something important?” Mother was looking expectantly at me. For that matter, so were Robyn and Cordelia.

  “I should have put the phone on speaker to save time.” I explained the reason for Maudie’s call.

  “You go on, dear,” Mother said. “It’s past ten o’clock—probably time we let Robyn get some rest, and even if it wasn’t, I think it’s time your grandmother and I called it a day. But we made a good start, didn’t we?”

  She beamed at the room. Which did, indeed, look much better, although it was still far from tidy or organized by any reasonable standards—much less those Mother, Cordelia, and I shared.

  “It wasn’t nearly as awful as I expected it to be,” Robyn said. “That is—I mean—” She threw up her hands. “Just thank you, okay?”

  “And come again?” Cordelia prompted.

  “Absolutely.” Robyn looked around and sighed, but it was a sigh of contentment. “This place already looks several hundred percent better.”

  Cordelia followed me to the front door.

  “Any chance you could fit a couple of boxes in your car?” she asked. “All those boxes of stuff she agreed to sell or donate or return to the owners—we should get as much as we can out of the house in case she starts having second thoughts.”

  “I’ve got the Twinmobile,” I said. “So plenty of room for boxes.” />
  “And there are a few boxes your mother wants to take charge of,” Cordelia added. “Nice if you could load those in her car before you go.”

  While we were loading the Twinmobile, I decided it was a good thing Robyn couldn’t see its interior, or she’d lose all confidence in my organizing and decluttering abilities. The bats, helmets, gloves, batting gloves, athletic cups, baseball socks, cleats, baseball hats, water bottles, and who knew what else—all the items that should have been in the boys’ baseball bags—were strewn throughout the car. Just for a moment, I contemplated how satisfying it would be to clean it all up. And then a wave of tiredness washed over me. I’d save the satisfaction for the morning. Better yet, I’d look forward to the even greater satisfaction of supervising while the boys did it.

  I called Michael to tell him I’d be home a little late, and why.

  “Quiet night,” he said. “Not only are the boys out, Rob and Rose Noire are, too. So when I got back from rehearsal I went out and read my lines to the toucan.”

  “Sorry!” I replied. By which I meant, sorry to have left him alone. I couldn’t say I was sorry to miss the line-reading portion of the evening’s entertainment. The Spanish Tragedy might be an important historical document and a milestone in the development of western drama, but it didn’t exactly amount to an enthralling evening for a modern playgoer. Even when it was Michael doing the orating, a little bit of Kyd went a long way. “I’ll run lines with you when I get home. Or better yet, tomorrow.”

  “No problem,” he said. “There’s plenty of time. And the bird’s a great listener. Hangs on every word I say.”

  I made a vow to be less critical of the play the next time I helped Michael run lines.

  “He’s probably hoping you’ll feed him when you finish,” I said. “When he cocks his head on the side as if he finds what you’re saying fascinating, he wants a grape. And he won’t repeat your lines back to you, you know. No matter how much you read to him.”

  “And that’s a blessing,” Michael replied. “If I thought he could learn the lines, I’d be reading to him from a much better play.”

  We said goodnight, and I reached to start the car. Then I remembered the letter from Archie in the box of Dr. Womble’s stuff. The box was on the seat beside me, so I reached over, rummaged around in it, and pulled out the envelope.

  Chapter 19

  I turned on one of the map lights and used my phone to take a picture of the front of the envelope. The whole front, showing not just the return address, but also the fact that it had been sent to Dr. Womble at Trinity, and was postmarked six months ago. Dr. Womble had retired several years ago—had Archie not heard about that?

  Of course, it was always possible that Dr. Womble wasn’t too keen on giving his home address to a convicted felon.

  Chief Burke would figure it out. I emailed the picture to him. I didn’t wait for a reply—after all, he was presumably still talking to Chuck Hagley—and I needed to get over to the funeral home before he finished.

  On the way to Morton’s Funeral Home, it occurred to me to wonder what went on in an arrangements room. Doing flower arrangements, perhaps? Surely most of that would happen at the florist. I hoped it had nothing to do with arranging the dear departed for the viewing. I’d learned to cope with Dad’s passion for sharing what he considered interesting medical details about his patients—or, worse, his autopsies. But behind-the-scenes mortuary knowledge was something I could live very happily without.

  Even without the prospect of finding out just what went on in an arrangement room, I had to admit that I wasn’t looking forward to visiting the funeral home. If you walked into one of the rooms there without knowing it was a funeral home, you’d look around and find the surroundings pleasant and peaceful, if a little on the conservative side. Rather like a hotel that wasn’t trying to be trendy. I liked Maudie Morton herself, especially when I ran into her outside the funeral home—doing her shopping, or attending her grandson’s baseball games. And the several times I’d been there to help friends or relatives with funeral plans, Maudie had always been brisk, no nonsense, and reassuringly calm.

  But still. Funeral home. Not a place where I wanted to be in any capacity.

  I was relieved to find Morton’s parking lot almost empty. I’d had a brief vision of arriving to find myself in the middle of a visitation for someone I knew whose death I hadn’t heard about. Or worse, in the middle of the funeral of someone I knew—someone who, not being a churchgoer, had opted for whatever kind of nondenominational or secular services they would hold at the funeral home. Of course, there was still the chance Maudie might want to show off one of her success stories—someone on whom they’d had to do a lot of work to get the body suitable for an open casket—for example, Mr. Hagley. She’d definitely done that a time or two with Dad—who didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he probably found it fascinating, and having autopsied the people in question, he was in a better position than anyone to marvel at the transformation. Sometimes people assumed that being Dad’s daughter I shared his interests and his imperturbability in the face of medical trauma. I only hoped Maudie’s people skills were sufficiently well-developed that she’d figured out there was a reason I’d gone into blacksmithing rather than medicine.

  When I walked through the door I found her sitting behind the reception desk.

  “Meg, dear.” She rose and gave me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You’re in plenty of time. The chief is still visiting with Mr. Hagley.”

  I was startled for a moment until I realized that by Mr. Hagley she meant the son.

  “Would you like some tea or coffee? It’s late, I know, but we have decaf.”

  “Tea would be nice,” I said. “With or without caffeine, whichever’s easiest. After all, I need to stay awake to talk to Mr. Hagley and then drive home.”

  I took a seat on a prim-looking but surprisingly comfortable sofa in front of the fireplace, in which a gas fire was doing a reasonable job of pretending to be real logs. Maudie went over to a sideboard that held two gleaming coffee carafes and two teapots under quilted cozies. She poured two cups from one of the teapots and brought them over on a silver tray with a full complement of the usual supplies—napkin, teaspoon, cream, sugar, non-dairy cream substitute, and three kinds of artificial sweetener. I began to feel soothed and pampered. I could well imagine how comforting the bereaved found these little luxuries. My own shoulders began to release the tension of the day.

  “Thanks.” I took my cup and inhaled the steam while Maudie stirred a tiny amount of sugar into hers. “How long have they been talking?”

  “Nearly an hour now.” She glanced at a Dresden china clock on the mantel. “I called the chief as soon as Mr. Hagley arrived, and by the time he came, Mr. Hagley and I had mostly finished discussing the cremation and burial arrangements.”

  “Oh—so that’s what the arrangements room is for,” I said. “I was thinking flowers. Look, if you talked to him about arrangements for his father, you probably have a good idea what he wants done with his mother as well. That’s really all I need to talk to him about—well, that and expressing Trinity’s official regrets over what happened.”

  “He wants a small, intimate funeral,” Maudie said. “Followed by interring his father—and reinterring his mother—in the columbarium at Trinity.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  Maudie cocked her head as if to ask why.

  “Mr. Hagley had been badgering Robyn to get his wife’s ashes back,” I explained. “Didn’t seem to grasp that there was a process, or was too impatient to follow through with the process. We were under the impression that the reason he was out there with a crowbar was to take them back himself.”

  “But why?” Maudie looked puzzled, and perhaps a little shocked. “Did he have some quarrel with the church?”

  “He was always quarreling with the church and everyone in it,” I said. “So maybe that was it. But informed sources say he needed money and was planning to sell
their niche.”

  “Ah.” She frowned slightly. “Perhaps it’s a good thing that the funeral and burial can’t go forward immediately. That will give young Mr. Hagley time to assess his father’s situation.”

  “You mean, figure out if he can afford to bury his parents in their niche or if he needs to sell it to help settle their debts.”

  “Precisely.” She sighed. “And if there really is financial need, I could arrange to offer a discount.”

  “That would be nice,” I said. Nice, and very typical.

  “It’s only fair,” she said. “After all—”

  Just then the door of the arrangements room opened. Chief Burke appeared, nodded to me and Maudie, then turned back to the man who had followed him to the doorway.

  “I appreciate your time,” he said. “If you think of anything else that might be relevant, don’t hesitate to give me a call. You’ve got my card.”

  “Yeah, right.” Chuck Hagley’s tone suggested that he didn’t much expect to need the card. He took the chief’s extended hand and shook it with the sort of facial expression that suggested he was graciously overlooking some shortcoming in the way he’d been treated.

  I studied him with interest. I didn’t see much of either parent in him. Dolores Hagley had been a short, plump, motherly, self-effacing woman. Junius Hagley had been bony and angular and gave such an impression of disjointed height that I was always vaguely surprised to stand next to him and find that we were eye to eye at five ten. Chuck Hagley was at least two inches over six feet and rather beefy. He didn’t appear particularly sad or stricken—more like someone who’d really rather be almost anywhere else.

  The chief had pulled out his phone and was studying it. He glanced up at me and held up the phone.