by J. R. Ripley
I thanked Karl for the inside information and rang off when he said his dinner date was at the door. Far be it from me to interfere in the man’s love life. Somebody deserved to have one. If it wasn’t going to be me, it might as well be Karl.
I replayed Karl’s words, but it only added to my confusion. So far, every road I took seemed to be a dead end.
I was about to heat up some rice and chicken when the home phone rang. It was Kim. “What happened to you?” I asked. “You disappeared.”
“I hung out with Dan.” There was a lightness to her tone that had been missing earlier.
I smiled while I banged a bag of frozen chicken tenders against the counter to loosen them up. “Glad to hear it. Any sparks?”
“What’s that banging?”
I explained about the chicken. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you being evasive?”
“No,” Kim said. “It’s too early to talk about sparks. I’m in no hurry this time. In fact, I—”
“Hold on a sec,” I said. “My cell phone is ringing.” I set down the home phone and ran to the bedroom where I’d set my purse. I extracted the phone. It was Derek. “Hello?” I said hurriedly.
“Hi, Amy. It’s Derek.”
“Yes, hello! Can I put you on hold for a second?”
“Sure,” he replied.
I ran to the kitchen and picked up the home phone. “Kim? Derek’s calling on my cell,” I whispered. “Can I call you back?”
“Oooh,” teased Kim. “Talk about sparks!”
“I’m not so sure about sparks,” I replied. I’d half convinced myself that our relationship was about to go down in flames. It seemed Derek might soon be remarrying Amy the Ex.
I agreed to catch up with Kim the next day and snatched up my cell phone. “Hi, Derek. How are you?” Could he hear my heart thumping in my chest?
“I was hoping I could see you.”
“Of course,” I said. Was he about to break up with me? Was this the big kiss-off? “When?”
“How about now?”
“I guess so. Sure.” I calculated the amount of time I’d need to wash and change clothes. “How soon can you get here?”
“That depends on how long it takes to get you to come open the front door.”
“Huh?”
“Look out your window.”
I did. Derek stood on the walkway. He was clutching a cell phone in one hand and balancing a pizza box with a DVD case atop it in the other.
He grinned up at me. “I hope you’ve got wine.”
“Be right there!” I flew down the stairs to let Derek in.
I threw on the store lights and unlocked the door. “Smells heavenly,” I said, catching the hunger-inducing aroma of pizza as Derek entered. I read the title of the DVD sitting on the pizza box. “The Postman Always Rings Twice?”
“Have you seen it? It’s the original version. Not the remake.”
I admitted that I had seen the film before. “But it’s been years.” My last boyfriend, Craig, had been more into Star Wars than stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. “It’s a favorite of mine. I could watch it again and again.”
We went up to the apartment. Derek set the warm pizza on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The pizza was from Brewer’s. I fetched plates and glasses and returned for a bottle of red wine.
“You do know this version stars John Garfield and Lana Turner?”
“I only realized while I was on my way here.” Derek popped open the DVD case and slipped the disc into the player. “I heard about Ms. Potter, of course. The whole town has. Too weird?”
“No, I guess not.” I settled into the sofa and tucked a pillow against my ribs.
Derek handed me a slice of pizza on a plate, then took one for himself.
As the movie ran through the opening materials, including an old black-and-white trailer for the film, I said, “Was there any special reason that you dropped by tonight, Derek?” I’d set another sofa pillow between us and put my plate on it.
“Can’t a man simply want to spend time with a friend?”
Friend?! Was that what I was to the man, a friend? Not even a girlfriend, just a friend? “Derek,” I said, looking him directly in the eye, “I know about the bridal dress.” In fact, I was beginning to think half the town knew.
“You do?”
I nodded.
He chuckled, revealing a row of even white teeth. “Isn’t that wild?” A bit of cheese stuck to his lower lip. I handed him a paper napkin, which he used to wipe it away. “I don’t think Amy, my Amy”—Derek looked appalled and blushed—“I mean, my ex-wife,” he said sternly, “knows a thing about the bridal business. If you ask me,” he continued, grabbing a second slice of pizza from the box, “I think it was all her friend Nan’s idea.” He glanced at the TV screen, then back at me. “Do you know Nan? Nan Cooper, I think?”
I was feeling confused and dizzy. And I hadn’t even started on the wine yet. “What’s this Nan got to do with it?”
“Like I said,” Derek explained, “I believe the shop was her idea.”
“Shop?”
“The all-things-bridal shop.” He grabbed for the wine but I reached out a hand and stopped him.
“All-things-bridal shop?”
“Sure, you know, a few gowns, some veils, some of those runner things you walk down the aisle on.”
I leaned over and kissed him.
“Hey!” My plate slid to the floor and Derek reached out to stop it. “What was that for?” He set the plate on the pizza box.
“Does it matter?” I grabbed the pillow between us and tossed it at the nearest chair.
“Not at all.” Derek pulled me closer and smothered my lips with his.
After we came up for air, Derek went on to explain that Amy the Ex and some of her gal pals had decided it might be amusing to open a wedding shop. They had found a space for rent along the town square. “She talked me into investing.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I may never get my money back.”
“I don’t know. As much as I hate to admit it, it could be a good idea. Plenty of couples come to the area to get married. The business might do okay.”
“I suppose.” Derek appeared thoughtful. “How did you find out, anyway?”
I pressed my finger to his lips. “Let’s just say a little birdie told me.”
“Listen, Amy,” Derek said, snatching my finger and pulling my hand toward his chest. “Amy, the other Amy, is my ex-wife and Maeve’s mother. I can’t exactly shut her out of my life.”
“I know that. I would never want that.” I laced my fingers with his. “But couldn’t you at least ask her to change her name?”
He smiled. “Sure, I’ll ask her. What name do you suggest?”
I opened my mouth and, in turnabout, he put a finger to my lips. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”
“It’s probably best if I don’t. It could cost me my ladylike image.” We both laughed.
The film started with a stranger coming to town, and my mind immediately drew similarities between the film character and Gus McKutcheon. By the end of the film, my brain was a tangle of dead-end possibilities to explain the deaths of Bessie Hammond and Lana Potter.
My eyes were drooping and I yawned.
Derek leaned forward, picked up the remote, and switched off the movie as the end credits rolled. “Call it a night?”
I glanced at the clock in the kitchen. “It’s only ten. How about a double feature?”
“Sure. I can do that. I had Maeve last night because her mom wanted to go down to the lake this morning, but she’s staying with her tonight.”
“I know. I saw her down there.” I crossed to the bookshelf and looked through the library of DVD titles. I was in the mood for something lighter. “How about a Doris Day musical?”
“Perfect,” agreed Derek, though I was sure he was only being gentlemanly.
I held up the DVD case of Tea for Two. “
I believe it’s Doris Day’s first musical and the first time she danced on screen.” The film, set in the Roaring Twenties, was an adaptation of the popular Broadway musical No, No, Nanette.
Derek was holding his copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice in his right hand and slapping it against his left palm. “People and things aren’t always what they seem, are they?” he said thoughtfully. “And when you mix two different personalities, you never know what the results will be.”
“How do you mean?”
Derek stretched his arms before answering. “Take Frank and Cora from the movie. Maybe not two of the nicest people on the planet, but if their paths had never crossed, would either of them have committed murder?”
I gave his question some thought. In The Postman Always Rings Twice, would Cora ever have murdered her husband, Nick, if Frank hadn’t come along? “It’s hard to say. Maybe not.” Derek’s point was certainly food for thought. Movies sometimes, oftentimes, did imitate life, and life sometimes imitated the movies.
I popped in the new film and rejoined him on the couch, tucking my feet up beneath me. I ran him through what I knew about Lana Potter’s death, which wasn’t much, except that it might or might not have been an accident. Then I told him all I’d learned about Bessie Hammond’s murder since last I’d seen him.
“I hate to say it”—Derek said it anyway—“but there’s not much to go on.” He reached for his wineglass. “I think the police are going to have a tough time solving this one.”
I rested my head against Derek’s shoulder. Maybe it was the film we’d just finished watching, but I was getting some ideas. “What if Gus was going to marry Moire, kill her, and take up with Lana?” I speculated. I had explained to him earlier how Moire had said Gus asked her to marry him and she’d said yes.
“Are you forgetting that it’s Lana who’s dead, not Moire?” countered Derek. “Are you trying to say Moire killed Lana to keep Gus for herself?”
“No, of course not.” Was it impossible though? My fingers drummed my knee. I don’t know. Maybe. What did I really know about Moire Leora Breeder? When it came down to it, not much more than I knew about Gus McKutcheon. “Karl Vogel told me that Lana Potter was pregnant at the time of her death. He also had some rather unflattering information about Gus. Possibly Lana, too.”
“Such as?”
I explained about his various business ventures gone sour, run-ins with the law, and, saving the best for last, his previous wife’s own mysterious demise.
“All rumor and innuendo.”
I pouted. “Sometimes you are such a lawyer.”
“Sorry,” he said with a smile.
“Don’t be.” I refilled his glass, then paused.
“What is it?” asked Derek, seeing the sudden look in my eyes.
I shook my head. “I’m probably being silly. But I wonder if Moire recently took out any big life insurance policy.”
In The Postman Always Rings Twice, the husband of Cora, Lana Turner’s film character, had recently taken out a big insurance policy on himself. “It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?”
Derek paused the film as the opening credits to Tea for Two began to roll across the screen. “Money and emotion.”
“That’s the only thing I can think of. McKutcheon comes back to town and starts thinking about how he can capitalize on his property.”
“And what better way than to generate interest in the old widow-in-the-lake tale?”
“Yeah. And what better way to do that than to have the widow in the lake, Mary McKutcheon herself, appear?” I gulped my wine.
“So he decided to make sure that happened.”
I nodded. “But something went wrong.”
“More than wrong,” said Derek. “Deadly wrong.” He brushed his fingers along the underside of my chin. “So where does that leave us?”
I thought a minute, but I could have thought a thousand minutes and wouldn’t have been any closer to an answer. My cell phone chirped. I ignored it and snuggled up against him. “I need some Doris.”
Derek smiled and hit the Play button on the remote.
31
I woke with a cramp in my side and another in my left leg. The TV screen displayed a sea of bright blue. I could feel Derek breathing deeply beside me on the sofa. The warmth of his body sent a soothing current through my skin.
I smiled, taking in his calm, rugged face. It would be a shame to wake him.
Rat-a-tat-tat-brrr!
I stifled a groan. So that’s what had awakened me. Drummy.
I gently extricated myself from Derek’s arm and stood. I switched off the TV and the living room fell into darkness.
Rat-a-tat-tat-brrr!
A cool breeze hit me in the face. I looked across the room. The faint light of a street lamp spilled into my bedroom. I’d left my bedroom window open. If I didn’t shut it, between the woodpecker and the cold air, Derek would wake for sure and I was certain the dear man could use his sleep.
I tiptoed to my bedroom. A gentle breeze shook the curtains.
Rat-a-tat.
I thrust my head out the window. “Well?” I whispered. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”
Brrr! Brrr!
I couldn’t help chuckling. “Silly woodpecker. Haven’t you ever read a guidebook to birds? You’re not supposed to be up this early.”
I gripped the window ledge and watched by the light of the moon as Drummy skittered up and down the tree in search of insects that most likely were still lying in bed, chitinous heads on tiny goose-feather pillows, fast asleep. Like all of us should have been.
I placed my hands on the rail of the lower sash, determined to close the window before the woodpecker started up again. But I paused, something tickling at the recesses of my mind. Woodpeckers. What was it that someone had said about woodpeckers, and why did it now make me uneasy?
I found my eye drifting out across the street, across Ruby Lake, toward the McKutcheon house.
Stars twinkled above. Mary McKutcheon was in her watery grave. At least, there was no sign of her dancing atop the water.
What had Derek said? People and things weren’t always what they seemed.
I picked up my binoculars and studied the house. There was no sign of activity.
I thought about the grave I had dug up. I thought about the goat. Had somebody made a goat out of me?
Call it curiosity or call it stupid, but I was going to take another look around the McKutcheon property. And what better time to do it than when everyone was fast asleep?
Besides, I was feeling restless. I needed to move. I set the binoculars down on the window ledge. Next, I changed into a comfortable pair of jeans and a heavy sweater. A chill had swept in overnight. I grabbed my sneakers, gave a quietly snoring Derek a gentle kiss on the forehead, and shut the door as quietly as possible behind me.
I’d be back in an hour at most. Then I’d make us both breakfast and tell him what I’d been up to. He’d probably laugh, but we all need a good laugh once in a while. I’d make him French toast with real maple syrup.
I stole across the street. The diner was open but nearly deserted at this hour. I couldn’t tell if Gus McKutcheon or Moire were inside or not, so I let it go. I didn’t want to be seen spying in the windows. The two of them would only wonder what I was up to.
Not that I was so sure what I was up to myself. Things were swirling around my brain, indiscernible and indecipherable things. Things I had seen and things I had heard. If only I could tie them all together. Maybe a good, long walk would bring some of those unknowns into focus.
I crossed the murky marina parking lot and headed inland through the woods toward the McKutcheon house. First, I revisited the spot near the shore where Lana Potter’s body had washed in. No trace remained beyond the trampled grass and a few bits of trash and several cigarette butts. There were no boats out on the lake as of yet.
I started inland, retracing the path I’d taken the day before. I swung past the tree where I’d
discovered Bessie Hammond’s dead body. How in the world had there come to be so much death in one place?
I followed the narrow trail toward the house. Behind my back, the sun was rising slowly over the mountains. In a matter of minutes, I was creeping up on the old cemetery plot. Not that it mattered. What I wanted was a look inside some of the outbuildings near the house, starting with the barn. Who knew what secrets it might be holding?
I couldn’t resist taking a look at the graveyard as I passed. My eyes were drawn to the stones and the mounds like magnets to iron.
I halted suddenly. Something about the area around the old cemetery seemed different somehow. There wasn’t yet enough sunlight reaching this far back in the woods, so I inched closer. Then I realized what was different.
The burial mound that held the goat was different. Smaller, lower. I neared the mound. It was definitely smaller and the whole of it looked to have been redone. Why?
I bent to the ground and ran a hand along the cold earth. The mound was nothing more than a small rise with a shallow depression in its center. I glanced over my shoulder with a feeling of unease. It felt as if unseen eyes were watching me.
But looking around, I saw no one.
I grabbed a nearby fallen branch and scraped at the dirt mound. “Ugh!” I fell backward at the sight of decaying flesh. It was the goat.
But why had it been rearranged? I picked myself up and dusted myself off, tossing the limb aside. A yellowish glitter caught my eye near the edge of the earth I had scraped away.
I reached down. It was a slender gold chain. I held it suspended before me at arm’s length. A four-leaf clover dangled from the chain.
I’d seen a chain identical to this one before. It had belonged to Ross O’Sullivan.
I started thinking, my mind turning over and over. What if there had been a body buried here? What better way to hide one body than to cover it with another?
I fingered the chain and noticed my hand was trembling. What I’d seen last week must have been real. I hadn’t been crazy at all. A man had been murdered at the McKutcheon house. Then that man was hastily buried out here in the woods. The goat had probably been slaughtered to cover up that murder. It might not have been diseased at all. That thought, at least, gave me a sense of relief.