“How nice,” Elinor said. “Anyone we know?”
“Well, that’s the sad part. It was Miss Eula Wyckham. She left her house to me! I can hardly believe it. I just got through meeting with your niece Kate Jacks. Betty Blanton is listing the house with her.”
“I hadn’t realized you were a relative.”
“I’m not. Betty Blanton said she didn’t have any kin. I stayed with her back in high school for a while after my father died. To find out, after all these years…. It’s just mind-blowing!”
“Nice surprise for Mathew, too, I imagine,” Elinor said. Mathew Calender, a member of the current crop of teachers at the high school, was probably stretched pretty thin providing for four on a teacher’s salary. It was doubtful New Community Church paid Janie much.
“He doesn’t know about it yet. He’s been away all week at his cabin. I hardly see my kids these days—teenagers!” she added as if that explained it all.
Dot had been studying Janie’s slot machine. “How does this thing work, exactly?”
“Nothing to it. Slide a twenty in here and punch the button. The machine will tell you if you win.”
“They don’t take pennies?” Dot looked disappointed.
Janie laughed. “I wish!”
In the end, Dot decided against throwing her money away. “Wish somebody would leave me their estate,” she remarked as they got in Elinor’s car.
“No, you don’t. You’d feel guilty about it, Dot. Especially if you hadn’t taken the opportunity to build a relationship with that person while they were alive. Clearly Janie Calender is operating on euphoria right now, but I expect that will wear off.”
Chapter 4
SATURDAY, July 8
“It was just a courtesy call to the Calenders,” Kate said over the phone. “Betty Blanton is actually my client. I was afraid Janie might want to keep that old house and rent it out or something, but she doesn’t seem to have any sentimental attachment to it. Said she hardly knew Eula Wyckham. I guess the poor woman had no one else to… ”
Elinor heard a crash in the background, then Kate shouting at the kids. “Gary! Let Enid have that! And go outside this minute. I’m trying to talk to Aunt Elinor.”
“So the house is available?” Elinor said, reclaiming her niece’s attention.
“I just got back from sticking a sign in the yard. It’s being offered as is. Betty Blanton said there might not be any money to fix it up. You’ll laugh, but she said it was my float that made her think of me. Take that, Shelby Jacks!”
“I’d like to see that house, please.”
“Out of morbid curiosity?”
“No, Kate. With an eye to buying it.”
“What?! Aunt Elinor, this is my work we’re talking about. Shelby’s already got his back up over you and Dot seeming to know more about that crime than you’re telling.”
“I have no idea what he’s talking about. I can’t help it if someone chose our library to commit murder, nor can I help it if neither the crime lab, DeWayne, nor your officious husband thought to search the library for the murder weapon.”
“You’ve got to admit DeWayne has a point. What self-respecting murderer leaves the weapon behind for the police to trace back to him?”
“Clearly someone who knows it won’t,” Elinor said calmly. “They can test that knife any way they like, but it won’t tell them any more than we already know, that it was used to cut Eula Wyckham’s throat. Now, do I get to see that house or not? I can always call another agent.”
Kate heaved a sigh. “I really resent your wasting my time this way, Aunt Elinor.”
“Actually, I’m not. I’ve been thinking of selling the farm and moving into town.”
Kate’s attitude changed immediately. “What time can you be there?”
“Half an hour, say? I’d like to swing by and pick up Dot so she can help me decide. It’s the little green cottage on Choctaw, isn’t it?”
*****
Mathew Calender packed up the Suburban with fishing gear, bedding, and the odd scrap of food. He wouldn’t be back to the cabin till after school started and didn’t want to leave anything for the mice to get into. He hated to leave, hated giving up the glorious solitude of Big Bear Mountain. He breathed in the resiny air and felt the stillness, the silence. No air conditioner roaring. No television blaring. No wife and teenagers constantly talking, arguing, wanting. This was a natural world and it suited him perfectly. He wished he was a hermit, wished he never had to speak to another human being again. He wouldn’t miss using his voice. Wouldn’t miss people. He wished he never had to put on a tie, sit in a church pew, never had to face another classroom, never had to pull lunchroom duty, or attend teacher in-service. He dreaded starting the whole cycle over again, showing up with the other teachers to hear their principal describe the new forms they would be using, new tests they would administer, new but so much the same as the old.
He walked around the outside of the cabin one more time, stopping off at the pump room to make sure the water had drained out. Re-entering the cabin, he unplugged the small refrigerator and propped open the door. He had already turned off the propane at the tank outside, but he checked the burner just to make sure he couldn’t smell gas. All that remained was to shut off the electricity at the panel and lock the door. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
He stepped out onto the screened porch and sat down in the only chair, an Adirondack he had made in his own shop class. He had used the wood of a downed tree from this very yard, a victim of pine bark beetle. It was never as hot up here on the mountain as it was down in town. At night he slept on this porch. In the winter, when he was up here hunting deer, he pulled down a bed from the wall inside.
He loved the smells, always musty when he first opened the cabin, but quickly giving way to pine and hickory, decaying leaves, and the woodsy masculine odor of his own clothes, left behind in the cottage to keep them from being laundered. Janie was freakishly interested in washing things. She didn’t come here, had no wish to, and, indeed, Mathew didn’t encourage his wife coming to visit. The presence of another person would change the place. He would have to accommodate, make conversation, make concessions to the other person’s need for comfort. All the things he got away from by being here. If it was unnatural, a mental illness of some sort, this need for solitude, to hear his own thoughts, to be still in a world that craved entertainment and variety, then he was the mad one.
He had missed out on the opportunity to introduce his son to this world. It had taken Mathew longer than most to adjust to fatherhood. By the time his son could be taken away from the maternal safety net, he was already formed. His son was spending his adolescence indoors, cooped up in his room, bellowing away on a trombone or hunched over one of his electronic devices. The family had come here once, out of pure curiosity, to see the place. Janie had cheerily suggested that father and son take this opportunity for “guy” time. Mathew knew that his son, as he walked around looking at things, was trying to imagine himself there, projecting how they might spend their time, what foreign foods he might have to eat, how he would get along without his mother, his friends, his world. And he had elected to ride back down the mountain. His mother and sister were already in the car.
The boy had never shown any interest in fishing, hunting, woodworking, or being alone with his father, and Mathew lacked the eloquence and will to sway him. But his daughter was another matter, probably the glue that held it all together, the marriage, him and Janie. When he was handed his newborn daughter for the first time, a sensation had washed over him so fierce and primitive, so unexpected, that he understood why a parent would do anything, die, kill for, suffer in any way, to protect that fragile being. Those feelings, so raw and powerful, had inevitably faded. The helpless infant had turned into a small human, gone through a long girly giggly time to emerge boy crazy and ever-connected to her phone. He was never called upon to throw his body in front of a speeding car or bullet to save her. On rare occasi
ons he could still feel that primal connection with his first-born, but mostly he thought of his children as belonging to Janie.
His part, the only part she needed him for, was to earn the family income. He left the child-rearing and almost every domestic decision to her, and it was for the best. His wife was the most capable and efficient person he had ever known, the most positive and cheerful. Nothing ever got her down. He supported his family, showing up year after year at a job he hated and would’ve left after the first year if not for becoming a father. He participated in marriage as a silent partner, and his reward, never challenged or denied, was to have a place to himself where he could spend a few weeks every summer, a few days every fall, alone. It was only here, alone on the mountain, that he didn’t feel like a failure. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.
So, why was he packing up early, leaving the place where he felt most himself?
Ever since getting up that morning, walking out back with his first cup of coffee, he had felt something tugging at him, pulling him back to the valley below. Was it family? The demands of home ownership? The fast-approaching opening to the school year? His disdain for electronic devices meant he had no first-hand knowledge of being on call, yet his experience as a hunter and a woodsman made him sensitive to other signals. He was being summoned. Trouble brewed down below and he was both fearful of what it might be and impatient to head it off.
Still, it was with the deepest regret that Mathew Calender looked around his cabin one last time, padlocked both doors, and went out to the Suburban to head home.
*****
“Now remember, Dot. Our roles are switched this time. While Kate’s showing me the house, you lag behind and keep a lookout for that laptop.”
“I don’t know why you’re bothering Kate with this. We’ve got the key to Eula Wyckham’s house.”
They were sitting in Elinor’s car with the engine running, the air conditioner on, waiting for Kate.
“Shush!” Elinor warned. “Having a real estate agent show you a house in which you have a legitimate interest is not the same as using a purloined key to enter that house.”
Dot looked at the modest home with the JV Properties For Sale sign in the yard. “Do you have a legitimate interest in this house? I know you’ve been talking about getting something smaller, but would this really suit you? My house is nicer than this.”
“You’re just used to seeing me in that rather grand place I live in now,” Elinor said, not really answering the question. “Where is she? I hate sitting here with the engine running. The neighbors are beginning to come to the windows.”
“You see,” Dot said. “The neighbors do pay attention to such things. I wonder what she did that afternoon, after she left Mr. Deaver, and before I went out to the car to get my turban?”
“Makes me wish I had filched her DayTimer as well. Maybe she had other appointments. Ah, there’s Kate pulling up behind us now.”
Elinor switched off the engine, and she and Dot joined Kate on the front lawn.
“Are we the first to see this house?” Elinor asked.
“Who else would want to see it?” Kate retorted. “It’s a tear-down.”
“I would think the police would be interested in the house of a woman who was murdered.”
“I knew that’s why you got me here, Aunt Elinor. Look, I’ll tell you everything I know and then maybe you’ll let me show you a house you might actually like. There were no keys in that bag you and Dot found. Betty Blanton had to send the locksmith over so we could get in without tearing up the door.”
“You were with them when they went through the house?”
“Me, DeWayne, Shelby, and the locksmith. Although, I don’t think Mr. Williams came inside.”
“And no one took anything away?”
“There was nothing to take. You’ll see. Eula Wyckham lived very… small.”
“And they’ve developed no theories as to why a murderer would bring a weapon to the library, kill a woman, and not take her purse?”
“It’s your fault they’re so tight-lipped around me. I only know about the missing keys because I heard DeWayne talking to Betty Blanton about it. He thinks the killer took the keys intending to steal her car, but got scared off somehow.”
“Hmmm,” Elinor said, noncommittally. “Has Janie Calender asked to see the place?”
“No. She’s mystified about the will and seems not to feel the slightest connection to the woman. They only got reacquainted at church. It seems that Eula Wyckham started attending New Community recently. So, do you insist on going in? Why don’t you let me show you a darling two-bedroom that just came on the market in the Bois d’Arc neighborhood?”
“Maybe later. Nice trees on this lot.”
There were four main rooms, a living room and a bedroom across the front, the kitchen and a smaller bedroom at the back. A side porch off the kitchen had been enclosed for a washer/dryer.
The living room was furnished in traditional style, a sofa that was dated but not worn. An easy chair facing the TV, a reading lamp, remote control. A large framed print hung over the sofa, a landscape that might have been imagined, but was certainly not Oklahoma. The rooms were as tidy and impersonal as Kate claimed they would be, as featureless as the interior of Eula Wyckham’s car. Few knickknacks, no family pictures, no personal items, the only books on the shelf, a white Bible with gold lettering—ornamental rather than functional—and half a dozen Reader’s Digest Condensed Books that looked equally unread. Elinor could imagine the woman tidying up before going off on her rounds that Saturday morning, not knowing she would never return. Eula Wyckham and Dot Hardwick, similarly aged and both single, could hardly have been more different in their personal habits and mode of living.
The beds, in their separate rooms, were made up with matching chenille bedspreads, a field of white with pink and green tufts. A closet in the front bedroom, monochromatic with dark garments, held three pairs of sensible shoes on the floor. She had died, apparently, in a fourth pair. A kitchen that still contained original fixtures and furnishings, was nevertheless fiercely clean, the Formica drain board scrubbed so many times the pattern was worn off. There were no dishes in the sink.
Eula Wyckham had eaten her meals in the kitchen at a hinged wooden table, reduced to half its size and pushed against the wall to make more space. There were two chairs, only one pulled up to the table. The other was at the end of the counter and held a stack of telephone books from various nearby communities—related to her work, perhaps? Two strawberry patterned placemats covered most of the table’s surface. One cushioned the salt and pepper dispensers and a rather fancy cut-glass box that held sugar, notched for a tarnished silver spoon. The other had once anchored Eula Wyckham’s solitary place setting. The sight arrested the interlopers, evoking as it did an image of the woman who had taken her meals there. Elinor and Dot thought about their own solitary eating. Kate, perhaps, tried to envision a meal that wasn’t controlled bedlam. She was the first to move on. Elinor darted a look over her shoulder to remind Dot what she was there for.
“Oh, right,” Dot said, hanging back.
In not much more time than it had taken DeWayne and Shelby, Elinor and Dot had also viewed the remnants of Eula Wyckham’s life.
“Well?” Kate said as they reassembled in the front yard.
“I’m afraid you were right, Kate. I can’t see myself in this house, although I do like the location.”
“I’ll show you the two-bedroom over behind the Civic Center.”
“Another time, if you don’t mind. I have to get Dot back for an appointment.”
Kate looked inquiringly at Dot. “Getting a pedicure,” Dot said blandly.
“Just don’t let DeWayne find out about this.”
“Kate, darling. You will sell me another house,” Elinor said.
“I know.”
“Did the crime lab leave the CPU behind because there was no blood on it?”
“I told you—they won’t
tell me anything. Shelby knows you exploit me.”
Elinor drove around the block and let Kate get well away. “Well, they’ve changed the locks on us, Dot. We won’t be able to get back in.”
“No point anyway.”
“Darn! No sign of her laptop?”
“Oh, there was a sign all right.” Dot took a coiled power cord from her pocket. “I found this plugged into the wall behind her easy chair in the living room.”
“That proves it, Dot! She had that laptop with her in the library, and that’s what her killer was after.”
*****
Information is a powerful bartering chip, fourteen-year-old Jeffrey Calender had learned. Powerless in most respects, he found that knowing things about people made him slightly less insignificant to the one person who mattered, Bethany Childers. A grade ahead of him in school, beautiful and popular, Bethany had no reason to ally herself with dweeby Jeffrey Calender, yet he had succeeded where hotter dudes failed by feeding her a steady diet of information only an overlooked person could gather.
Jeffrey Calender was a human fly on the wall. He spied on boys Bethany was interested in and reported back to her. He found out which girls were loyal to her. He carried her cigarettes so her father wouldn’t catch her. He pretended to be immune to her blue eyes, tiny hands and feet, the curve of her cheek, and her almost edible scent. He was her fool, pack animal, errand boy. She assumed he was gay, never suspecting the terrific boners she gave him.
In order to perfect his spycraft, Jeffrey rehearsed on his own family, sometimes seeming to be upstairs in his room practicing on his trombone but actually playing a recorded session. He himself could be anywhere, posted at one of his listening stations, spying on his sister or mother. Down the hall, Sara might be having a chat with a friend or boyfriend. He could tell immediately if the other party was a boy or girl by the animation in her voice. Figuring out the exact identity might take longer. Or, he could be perched at the bend in the stairs listening to his mother’s phone talk down in the kitchen. She did a lot of volunteer work and multi-tasked while she cooked.
Death In The Stacks: An Elinor & Dot library mystery Page 6