Toucan Keep a Secret

by Donna Andrews

  “And what am I doing here?” He smiled. “I came on account of Jeff. He never struck me as a deeply religious person, yet after he came back to Caerphilly, he became a regular here. I wanted to find out why.”

  “It grows on you,” I said. “Though if you want to know why Jeff came here, you might want to talk to Dr. Womble.”

  “Is he the guy who gave the sermon? I have to admit, I would never have imagined that a sermon could range from Charles Darwin to Sojourner Truth to Charlie Brown and manage to make more than a little sense.”

  “That was Father Shakespeare, and he and Dr. Womble are old friends,” I said. “Go down to the parish hall, grab a plate of food, and talk to them.”

  “Are you trying to convert me?”

  “No, just trying to feed you,” I said.

  “Okay then.” He laughed and started to turn. Then his face grew serious again. “About Jeff,” he began. Then he stopped and frowned as if not sure what to say. Or maybe not sure how I’d take whatever he was about to say.

  “What about Jeff?” I prompted finally.

  “When you put him back, is there some kind of … um … ceremony? Something brief, dignified.”

  “I’m sure between Dr. Womble, Father Shakespeare, and Robyn we can come up with something you’d approve of.”

  “Something Jeff would approve of. That’s more important.”

  I nodded.

  “And this time, can we put his full name on the plaque? Paul Jefferson Blair. I think he’d like it that way.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Now go hit the chow line.”

  He smiled and turned toward the parish hall—though he stopped to stare for a few moments at Nimitz.

  “Blessing of the animals?” he asked finally.

  “That’s not till October,” I said. “He’s just visiting.”

  Donovan shrugged and went into the parish hall.

  “Nice that some people can relax and have a good time.” Horace appeared beside me. “Some of us have to get back to work.”

  “‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one,’” I sang. “And here I thought the department would be pleased that I found the real killer.”

  “We are,” he said. “But you have no idea how much we have to do to wrap it up. I was working all night, and still have hours of work ahead of me.”

  “So are you allowed to tell me if you found the rest of Mrs. Van der Lynden’s jewels?” I asked.

  “Not a big secret,” he said. “We got the Shiffleys’ dogs looking around, and found Archie’s car hidden in a shed at the other end of Ragnar’s farm.”

  “He has a car?” I said. “Somehow that surprises me.”

  “It sure surprised Ragnar, who’s been driving him around whenever he needed to go anywhere for the last year or so.”

  “What a jerk!” I exclaimed.

  “Even Ragnar seemed a little put out,” Horace said. “And you know how mellow he is. Anyway, we found the guy at the rehab clinic who can testify that Archie was bribing him to get an alibi. And we found out from Bart Hempel that he’d given his gun to his brother Aaron, so we’re pretty sure it will turn out that Archie got hold of it when he killed Aaron. And your dad’s been studying the X-rays of Aaron’s head wound, and he says the medical examiner in 1994 must have been blind or incompetent. No way the wound on his head could be from falling against a headstone. Blunt instrument all the way! So we might try to charge Archie with Aaron Hempel’s murder, too.”

  “Awesome.” I was delighted to be hearing that last bit of news from Horace, who merely gave me the highlights, rather than from Dad, who would have tried to share all the grisly medical details that had led him to this conclusion.

  “Anyway, I should get back,” he said. “Do you think your mother will kill me if I fill a paper plate and run?”

  “She’ll kill you if you don’t take back a couple of platters for your colleagues down at the station,” I said. “Just ask her.”

  He nodded and scurried toward the parish hall.

  I managed to make it just inside the room—but nowhere near the food—when someone else hailed me.

  “Ma’am?”

  I turned to see Bart Hempel looming over me.

  Chapter 40

  “Sorry to bother you,” Hempel said. “But I understand you’re the lady I should talk to about what I want done with Aaron’s ashes.”

  “Yes.” I held out my hand. “Meg Langslow.”

  “Bart Hempel.” His hand swallowed mine—and my hand was large for a woman—but his grip was gentle. In fact, his whole demeanor was mild and gentle. Strange how seeing someone led into a police station in handcuffs can influence your perceptions of him.

  “Right now your brother’s ashes are down at the police station for safekeeping,” I said. “But I’m sure the chief would let you take them. Or we could send them wherever you’d like.”

  He frowned and looked down at his feet. Then he jerked his head up again as if he’d given himself an order to look me in the eye.

  “Any way he can just stay here?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “I can’t imagine anyone here would object.” Actually, Mr. Hagley might have if he were still around, but Hempel didn’t need to know that.

  “Even though Aaron wasn’t Episcopalian?” Hempel asked. “I don’t rightly know what he was—if anything.”

  “We’re pretty easygoing about that,” I said. “And besides, after nearly a quarter of a century, we’re kind of used to having him around. It will be nice to put a name to the face—or perhaps I should say the space.”

  Hempel nodded and looked down at the ground again. I waited.

  “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” His voice choked slightly. “Thank you.”

  He looked up again and I could see tears welling in his eyes.

  “He’s been here longer than he was anyplace else on this earth,” he said. “And it’s a good place.” He looked around and nodded approvingly. “I can see that.”

  “When you get a chance, write down his full name for me, and his birth date.” I had a feeling Hempel didn’t want to break down in front of me, and having something practical to do might help. I tore a sheet out of my notebook and handed it to him, along with one of my pens. “We need to do a new plaque for his niche anyway. And remember, if you come to visit his grave, we usually keep the columbarium locked up to prevent vandalism—but just check in at the church office and they can let you in.”

  He nodded and took the offered pen and paper. He bent over to write on the closest flat surface—the wall beside the door—and printed his brother’s name, birth date, and death dates in large, firm block capitals. Then he handed back the pen and paper.

  “I’m working a twelve-step program,” he said. “I need to put you and yours on the list of people I harmed.”

  “Not directly or deliberately,” I said.

  “Yeah, but if I hadn’t sent Aaron to shake down Archie for a share of the loot I thought he had, Archie wouldn’t have gotten hold of my gun and he couldn’t have used it to try to kill you. Just because I didn’t intend any of that doesn’t mean I’m not responsible. I’m a different person now than I was then. Better, I hope. Anyway, if there’s anything you can think of that would help me make amends, let me know.”

  “I can think of two things you could do that would please people around here, if you’re game,” I said. “See that man over there who’s gesturing a little too wildly with that cup of punch?”

  “The short, bald one?”

  “That’s him. My dad. He’s a big mystery reader—and he’s been trying to reconstruct exactly what happened at the Van der Lynden robbery. Will you talk to him?”

  “Sure.” Hempel shrugged. “Why not? As long as he’ll be okay with exactly how unglamorous the whole thing was.”

  “I expect he has a lot of illusions that you’ll need to shatter. But first—see the tall, white-haired man in the disreputable tweed suit? The one whose glasses are about to f
all off his nose?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s Dr. Rufus J. Womble. He was pastor here when your brother died. He’s really the one who’s responsible for Aaron being buried at Trinity. Go talk to him. Tell him a little about what your brother was like.”

  Hempel’s face lit up.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll go do just that.”

  He shook my hand again and ambled off with a lighter step than before. I turned my attention to the buffet tables, but before I’d gone two feet I felt a hand on my arm.

  “Ms. Langslow.”

  “Mr. Hagley.” It felt odd to be calling someone else by the name I’d so long associated with Mother’s bête noire. So I was relieved when he grimaced and held out his hand.

  “Just Chuck, please. When you say Mr. Hagley, I look around for Dad.”

  “Me too, actually, and it’s just Meg.”

  “I understand I have you to thank for finding Dad’s killer.”

  “I helped,” I said. “I think the police would have found him before too long.”

  “I assume this means we can arrange the funeral fairly soon,” he said. “And in case you were wondering, yes, I would like to keep Mom and Dad here. So if you hear anything about who Dad was trying to sell the family slot to, tell them the deal’s off. Why didn’t Dad let me know if he needed money? I may be an ambulance chaser, but I’m a damned successful one. I gather he’s been working part time at the funeral home for the last ten years—I always thought that was some kind of weird volunteer charity thing.”

  “Parents can be like that,” I said. “They’re so used to taking care of us that sometimes they can’t handle it when they’re the ones who need taking care of.”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head as if still having a hard time believing it. “Anyway—the guy who preached today—it was pretty good. Is he the one who’d be doing the sermon?”

  “That could probably be arranged,” I said. “Or you could ask Dr. Womble. I know your mother was very fond of him. And I think your dad found him only mildly exasperating.”

  “He must be a magician, then,” Chuck said. “Either one of them will be fine. Once I hear from the chief when he’s releasing Dad’s body, I’ll be in touch to arrange things.”

  He nodded and headed off for the buffet table. I was about to follow him when Dr. Womble appeared in front of me. He was holding two plates of food. He handed me one.

  “Could we talk?” he asked. “Perhaps down the hall, where it’s a bit quieter?”

  We went out into the hall. I waited while Dr. Womble fed Nimitz a few bits of fruit, then followed him to one of the Sunday school classrooms. We set our plates down on the edge of a table on which one of the classes was building a Lego diorama of Palm Sunday and the Last Supper and pulled up two chairs.

  “Did Bart Hempel find you?”

  “Yes. Thank you for sending him to me. He’s going to come over to the house this afternoon for a nice long talk about his brother.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “I rather think I need your help with something.” He looked anxious, which was fairly unusual for him.

  “You have it,” I said. “What can I do?”

  “I’ve been keeping a lot of secrets,” he said. “Hazard of the profession, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Although I found out a few of them yesterday, I’m under no illusion that you’ve exhausted your supply.”

  “Heavens, no,” he said. “And most of them I’ll take to my grave—quite apart from pastoral confidentiality, why bring people’s fears, failings, and foibles into the light? And it can be such a relief sometimes to unburden oneself without fear of embarrassment.”

  “Understandable.” I wondered if I should remind him that he’d started off asking me for some kind of help.

  “But I think this secret needs to come to light.”

  I waited.

  “It’s about Mrs. Van der Lynden’s jewels.”

  “Don’t tell me—you knew all this time where they were hidden?”

  “Good heavens, no. If I had, I would have told the police. Too many people suffered from the loss of those wretched baubles.”

  “What about them, then?”

  “They’re worth a lot of money, aren’t they?”

  “Probably,” I said. “Archie’s been selling off what he could, so I have no idea how many pieces are left. Possibly not very many, but they’d be the most valuable pieces that he couldn’t sell as easily. So yes, a lot of money.”

  “Thousands of dollars?”

  “At least,” I said. “Could be hundreds of thousands, depending on how much is left. A pity. Archie will probably spend it all on lawyers’ fees, trying to keep himself out of the electric chair.”

  “Then we probably need to break the news to him as soon as possible.”

  “What news?”

  “That the money’s not his to spend. The jewels don’t belong to him.”

  “Then who do they belong to?”

  “Trinity.”

  “Trinity? Our Trinity?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you figure that?”

  He sighed and took off his glasses to polish them on his sweater. Today’s sweater looked as if he’d been sweeping chimneys in it, so I resigned myself to taking another stab at cleaning them when he gave up.

  “Mrs. Van der Lynden came to me a year or so before she died. She told me that she was going to disinherit Archie and leave everything to Trinity. I tried to talk her out of it—I wouldn’t have discouraged her from leaving a substantial bequest to the church, but completely cutting out her only son? She was adamant. She’d already signed the documents. Left a copy with me in addition to the one on file with her attorney.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “She said he’d know. I asked if she’d told him, and she said she would when the time was right. Apparently she never did.”

  “How’d he react when he found out?” I asked. “But wait—he never did find out, did he? Because last night he acted as if he thought that if he could arrange for the jewelry to be found, they’d give it back to him as his mother’s heir.”

  “We kept it from him—the attorney and I.”

  “How? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m related to an unreasonable number of them, and sometimes I overhear them talking. Isn’t there some kind of law that you’d have to give him a copy of the will?”

  “Yes, but she didn’t do it with a will. Some kind of trust. Apparently they’re a lot more private. I consulted the bishop, of course, and he ran it by the chancellor, which is what they call the diocese’s main lawyer. They both seemed to think it was all in order. I assumed Mrs. Van der Lynden would tell Archie—in fact, to tell the truth, I thought perhaps they’d had a temporary falling out, and that she’d redo the trust when they made up again.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “Apparently not. And apparently she didn’t ever tell him. And while she’d been too ill to visit him for some months, the end came rather suddenly, so there was no time to arrange for compassionate leave so he could see her one last time.”

  I nodded, although from what I’d seen of Archie and heard of his mother, I wondered if either of them would have been that keen on a farewell visit.

  “I was afraid of the effect it would have on him,” Dr. Womble went on. “First losing his mother, then feeling abandoned, even rejected by her. I suppose it was almost a relief when Mrs. Van der Lynden’s attorney explained that this was not going to be a windfall for Trinity—that we’d be lucky if her remaining assets were sufficient to cover her debts.”

  “And did they?”

  “Not quite, but the bishop managed to convince a few of the creditors to write off their debts as a donation to the church. The rest were covered by the sale of her house—the smaller one she moved to after she sold the estate. We deposited about a thousand dollars in Archie’s account—the one his trust fund went to—and convi
nced him that that was the extent of his inheritance. The bishop knew, of course, and Mrs. Van der Lynden’s attorney, but we saw no reason for anyone else to know.”

  “Did Archie seem surprised at getting almost nothing?” I asked. “Disappointed?”

  “Not at all.” Dr. Womble began uselessly polishing his glasses again. “I rather think he knew how bad things were.”

  “And besides, he knew he had the jewelry waiting for him when he got out,” I added. “So he wasn’t worried. Wait—are you sure the trust covers the jewels?”

  “Oh, yes.” He smiled faintly. “I wondered about that at the time. I couldn’t decide if it meant that she still had the jewels, or that she thought Archie did. Either way, she included them.”

  “I can understand why you kept it from Archie,” I said.

  “But if we’d been honest with him, perhaps it would have shaken him a bit. Inspired him to some kind of real reform.”

  “Or maybe it would just have made him more bitter and angry than he already was.”

  “You could be right. But still, on a more practical level, if he’d known he’d been disinherited, he wouldn’t have come up with his crazy scheme for arranging to have the jewels found. And poor Mr. Hagley would still be alive.”

  “Archie would probably have come up with some other crazy scheme.” I didn’t quite know what to say about Mr. Hagley. Yes, Archie’s scheme had cost him his life. I couldn’t exactly say that I’d miss Mr. Hagley, but I certainly hadn’t wished him dead. Just off the vestry and out of my hair—and Mother’s. A thought hit me. “And just think how happy it would have made Mr. Hagley to know about the bequest to Trinity. He was always so concerned about our financial stability.”

  “I doubt if Trinity will get anything immediately,” Dr. Womble said. “I expect there will be legal wranglings. Archie will try to fight it.”

  “You should tell Robyn right away,” I said. “And then the two of you can tell the bishop. The legal wrangling will be his headache. Bishops are good at that sort of thing.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Womble beamed beatifically. “Isn’t it lucky they never made me a bishop?”

  “Mommy?” Dr. Womble and I turned to see Josh and Jamie peering into the room. Then Michael appeared over their shoulders, carrying Nimitz on one arm. Nimitz was gurgling happily and rubbing his enormous beak against Michael’s chin.