“Wow.”
“There was a child, too,” Asa added, softly. “But the little girl also seemed to disappear, with her mother.”
Cradling the kitten, I leaned further forward, starting to understand how small-town history could be riveting. “Was she murdered, too?”
Asa didn’t answer my question. Instead, he told me, “Benedict’s scandalized congregation split apart for good and abandoned the church, which, as you know, has undergone many incarnations since that time.”
Yes. The building was currently occupied by Lighthouse Fellowship.
What would happen to that congregation, now that Pastor Pete was probably leaving?
“Why did you remove all of that from your history?” I asked. “As I assume you did. There was nothing about the fifties, and I certainly didn’t read that story.”
“You really read that far?” Asa seemed touched. “You read up until the 1950s?”
“Of course,” I said. “And I really wondered why that whole decade was omitted.”
In the blink of an eye, Asa’s mood changed for the worse. “Lillian demanded that I excise the entire scandal from the book,” he told me, practically snarling. I couldn’t believe how quickly he’d grown angry. “She said most people had forgotten—or never heard—the whole tale. Meanwhile, she’d worked her entire life to restore the family’s reputation, through her own good works.” He raised his bearded chin. “I told her that was admirable, but that I had a responsibility to tell the truth.”
“Just like historian Gertrude Himmelfarb would advise.”
He knitted his brows. “You know about her? The cat’s name makes sense to you?”
“Yeah, I spent a lot of time in grad school.” I pointed to my chest. “PhD. Philosophy.”
Asa got quiet, and I didn’t think it was because I’d impressed him with my degree. He was trying to figure out how much, exactly, he should tell me.
“I’m sorry that you had to change your history,” I told him, speaking in what I hoped was a soothing tone. The last thing I wanted to do was trigger one of his flashes of rage when I ventured, “And you had to do it, right? Because Miss Flynt told you she wouldn’t deed the house to the historical society if you didn’t take out the part about the scandal.”
Asa hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I let her read the original manuscript, because she insisted on knowing how I’d portrayed her family. And when she saw that I’d included the scandal and the speculation about the murder, she threatened to change her will.” I saw a shadow of pain and betrayal in Asa’s eyes. “And she almost sold the house, anyway. Even though I did as she asked—against my conscience.”
Gently placing Himmelfarb the cat on the floor, I stood up, in case I had to run away after I asked my next question, which might provoke him. But I wanted to know the truth. “You and Miss Flynt fought recently, didn’t you? And she burned the manuscript the night of her murder.”
Asa’s eyes widened with alarm. “How did you . . . ? And . . . And it’s not like you think . . .” He raised his hands. “We did argue about the manuscript and her will, but that happened days before she was killed. I swear.”
“I believe you,” I said, so he wouldn’t get nervous and do something crazy. I also thought he was telling the truth. “I found all those copies of your book, without any mention of Benedict Flynt, right after Lillian’s death,” I reminded him. “Even though it’s self-published, it would’ve taken a few days, at the very least, to alter and reprint the whole thing, then have it shipped here.”
Asa sank down onto one of the boxes, and when he looked up at me, I saw that he was relieved. “You honestly believe me?”
“Yes,” I promised. “Your story makes sense.”
He fidgeted with one of the artifacts he’d shown me while I’d been struggling to stay awake. I couldn’t even recall where the plumed pen and inkwell fit into the story. Then he met my gaze again, and I saw that, in spite of the fact that he probably hadn’t killed Lillian, he was still scared—and guilt ridden.
“I . . . I saw her, the day of her death,” he confided. “She’d called to tell me that she planned to burn the manuscript I’d loaned her, to obliterate the story forever. But I wanted it back. I’d put so much work into it. I wanted my original copy, just as I’d written it.”
I was confused. “Couldn’t you just print another copy?”
He seemed almost insulted. “I used a typewriter for the first draft.”
“You’re kidding!”
His narrow shoulders slumped, as if he also realized that he might’ve carried the whole “stuck in the past” thing a little too far. Yet he quickly jutted out his chin, defending himself. “I wanted one document that would be forever unique, for the archives. Each typewriter leaves its own footprint, unlike documents created on a computer. And there’s a certain commitment to a typewritten history. It can’t be easily altered—as the computer file obviously was, to suit Lillian’s revisionist whim!”
The weird thing was I kind of understood his point. Yet he must’ve put a lot of extra effort into retyping the whole thing on a computer, so his publisher could print the manuscript, too.
Then again, he’d probably loved rehashing the centuries a second time.
“So, what happened when you asked Miss Flynt to return the original?” I asked.
“It was too late. I hurried over to the mansion, to beg her not to toss the pages into the fireplace, but I didn’t get there on time.” Asa’s face got even whiter than usual as he recounted the memory. “I kept calling to her, but she didn’t answer, so I went up the stairs and . . .”
“She was already dead. In the tub.”
He nodded numbly. “Yes. And the only complete history of Sylvan Creek was in flames. Turning to ashes.”
I thought he was still telling the truth. He was a strange man, and desperate to save a society and a manuscript that few other people, if anyone, really cared about, but he wasn’t a killer.
“Why didn’t you call the police? Why did you just leave her in the tub—for me to find?”
“I was afraid.” He hung his head. “Lillian and I had been at odds recently. And Martha advised me to stay quiet.” He continued to slouch down, folding up. “She and I fought about whether I should tell the truth when we were setting up for the Fur-ever Friends gala.”
I’d seen that fight from the window of Flynt Mansion. He’d curled up then, too.
Asa rested one hand on his stomach, like he felt queasy, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “The whole time we were decorating, I knew Lillian was in the tub. And now you know. . .”
“It’s okay, Asa,” I assured him. “I won’t go to the police. But I think you should tell them everything you just told me. Detective Black is probably going to figure out what happened that night, sooner rather than later. He’s pretty sharp. It would probably be better for you to come clean on your own. And I would back you up. I’m kind of friends with Jonathan Black.”
The raw gratitude on Asa’s face was almost painful to see. He’d clearly been living with a big burden, with no support from Martha. “Thank you, so much. I’ll consider that.”
I moved toward the thick door of the vault, ready to leave, even if the space didn’t terrify me quite so much anymore. But before I crossed the threshold, I remembered something that I wanted to ask him.
“The woman in the painting,” I said. “Do you know her name?”
He nodded. “Of course. Her name was Violet Baumgartner. And her illegitimate daughter—as you might have already guessed—wasn’t murdered. She was threatened into a lifetime of silence and hiding by the cruel father who abandoned her.”
It only took me a moment to put the pieces together.
“Oh, my gosh!” I gasped. “Bea was telling the truth! She is Lillian’s sister!”
Chapter 54
“I can definitely see the resemblance between mother and daughter,” I told Socrates and Tinkleston, who lay on opposite sides of the fireplace, about
three feet apart from each other. I wouldn’t have called them friends—I hadn’t seen Socrates look directly at Tinks yet—but it was difficult to maintain much distance in a cottage the size of a postage stamp. Not if they both wanted to enjoy the crackling fire. Stabbing a butcher knife into the large, oblong pumpkin that I was carving, I glanced again at the painting. Violet Baumgartner’s stern face, illuminated only by the fire and the room’s two small lamps, looked more intimidating than ever. “The wide jaw, the thick eyebrows . . . I can definitely see Bea in her mother,” I added. Then I frowned. “If Bea wore makeup. And combed her hair. And didn’t dress like she pulled her entire wardrobe from a discount supermarket lost-and-found bin . . .”
“Mrrow!”
I was interrupted by Tinkleston, who growled in a throaty, menacing way. Looking over, I saw him flex his claws and narrow his eyes at the portrait.
“You see hints of Bea, too, don’t you?” I asked him, resuming my attempt to give the uncooperative gourd a jagged grin. “And you remember how she kept you stuck in that crate.”
Retracting his claws, Tinks blinked at me, as if he’d understood everything I’d just said. I was starting to believe that he was a particularly perceptive cat. He and Socrates might eventually come to realize that they had quite a bit in common.
“Don’t worry,” I told Tinkleston. “You’re not going back to Whiskered Away Home. You live here now.”
Tinks’s sourpuss expression didn’t change, but he curled up more tightly on the rug, while Socrates thunked his head down onto his paws and sighed.
I smiled at him, convinced that he’d come around soon enough. Then the cottage grew very quiet as I focused on my annual arts and crafts project. I was leaving for Moxie’s soon, to help her hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, and I always took a poorly carved pumpkin, as well as homemade apple cider donuts for us and Doggy Donuts for the many pups who would go door to door, too. It sometimes seemed like as many pets as humans trick-or-treated in Sylvan Creek.
No wonder Elyse Hunter-Black wants to film here.
But what will she do now that Flynt Mansion isn’t for sale?
Or will my mother prove that her listing agreement preempts the will . . . ?
I was so preoccupied with my thoughts—and my jack-o’-lantern’s lopsided, crossed eyes—that I hardly noticed a soft rapping at my door.
In fact, at first I mistook the sound for the light tap of the plum tree’s branches against the window, which I’d strung with tiny orange lights. The night was breezy, with a promise of rain later, and the tree was knocking now and then, as if it wanted to come inside before the storm.
Then I heard the faint noise again, and I untwisted myself from my lotus position on the floor. “Hold on!” I called, rising awkwardly. “I’m coming!”
I assumed that Jonathan, who wouldn’t get any trick-or-treaters at his remote house, was oblivious to the holiday and making good on his promise to install more locks.
“Just a second,” I told him, as I used my forearms to twist the doorknob, because my hands were goopy, and I still held the knife.
But when I managed to open the door, I didn’t find a tall, handsome detective standing there, tool kit in hand.
No, I was greeted by a short, nervous ghost, who held what looked like a gun under a white, trembling sheet, and who greeted me with a shaky, “T-t-t-trick or t-t-t-treat!”
I took a moment to look my visitor up and down, noting that the sheet was way too long, and Charlie Brown would’ve been embarrassed by the ragged attempt at eye holes.
Glancing quickly over my shoulder, I saw that Tinkleston still slept, while Socrates stretched and yawned.
Then I turned back to my visitor, who continued to threaten me with a twitching, concealed firearm, and said, “Would you like to come in for something warm to drink and a homemade donut?”
Chapter 55
“Fidelia is a very unusual name,” I noted, setting a mug of steaming white hot chocolate in front of my guest, who’d taken off her sheet to reveal that the gun—as I’d suspected—was actually a carrot. Well, I hadn’t guessed it was a carrot, but I’d been pretty sure that Davis Tuttweiler’s late-in-life, insecure, largely abandoned daughter hadn’t really been packing a pistol. Placing a plate of still warm apple cider donuts on the kitchen table, too, I sat down across from her. “Are you named after your grandmother? Or an aunt?”
Fidelia’s hair was shapeless to begin with, and the sheet hadn’t done her limp locks any favors. She pushed some flattened, brown curls out of her hazel eyes with a hand that was still shaking a little. “No, I’m named after Fidelia Bridges.” My ignorance must’ve been apparent, because she added, “The nineteenth-century painter.”
“Oh, that Fidelia!”
Socrates, who sat at my feet, eating a Doggy Donut from an antique ceramic plate shaped like a pumpkin, knew that I’d never heard of the artist in question. He shot me a disapproving look, challenging me for so long that I admitted to Fidelia, “I have no idea who that is.”
She slouched on the chair. “Nobody does.”
“Fidelia,” I prompted gently, through a mouthful of donut. I could taste the little bit of cardamom I’d added to the batter, along with cinnamon, allspice, and two cups of tangy cider pressed at the Twisted Branch Orchard. “Why have you been following me?”
Dipping her head with shame, Fidelia cupped her hands around her mug and stared into the decadent, thick brew of cream, white-chocolate chips, and vanilla, all topped with more cream—whipped—and a sprig of mint from my windowsill garden. “I wanted to confront you several times, but I just couldn’t get up the nerve. I was going to demand that you give me the painting, which should’ve been my inheritance. But I just couldn’t do it.”
I took a sip from my mug and wiped whipped cream from my lips with the back of my hand. “What do you mean, your inheritance?”
“I knew that one of my father’s paintings was at Flynt Mansion,” she explained, raising her face again. She had hollow cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. “I didn’t see my dad much, but he liked to tell the story about how one of his portraits had been cursed by a minister. Dad said that, if anyone removed the painting from the Flynt’s property, the subject would haunt the house forever.” She smiled wanly. “Davis Tuttweiler was an eccentric man. The tale amused him.”
I was confused. “But why would you think the painting is your legacy?”
“I didn’t, really,” Fidelia admitted, fidgeting with some buttons on a cardigan that aged her about ten years. “But my father left me nothing when he died. I got tired of struggling, so I reached out to Lillian Flynt, asking her to have pity on me and give me the painting, or at least leave it to me in her will. I knew that the Flynt family loathed the portrait, and I’d done some research, too. I also knew that Lillian had no real heirs. I came to Sylvan Creek, hat in hand, and—to my surprise—she said she would consider my request.”
“When did all this happen?”
“I arrived in town about two weeks ago,” Fidelia said. The corners of her mouth drooped. “I really thought I had convinced her that I deserved the portrait.”
“So what went wrong?”
Fidelia suddenly glowered at me. “Right before she died, Miss Flynt told me that she’d changed her mind. That I needed to ‘fend for myself in this world,’ and that you would inherit the painting—because its monetary value would mean nothing to you.”
Had I just been handed a clue to the mystery of Lillian’s bequest to me?
And had Fidelia positioned herself as a suspect in Lillian’s murder? I could picture her the night of the Fur-ever Friends gala, standing alone in the yard. At what point had she arrived at the property?
I watched her closely. “Why were you at Miss Flynt’s house the night of the fund-raiser?”
Fidelia grew even more pale. “I wanted to ask her, one more time, to reconsider. I waited for her to join the party. But she never came out of the house. And then the ambulance and th
e police arrived, and I learned that I’d never have the chance to speak with her again.”
Her story made sense.
“So, what do you want from me?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know. She’d tried to threaten me with a root vegetable.
“I want you to give me the painting,” she said, looking around at the cottage. “You do seem to live simply, but everything is just perfect. You don’t need the portrait, like I do.”
I took a moment to consider her request. I didn’t like the painting, and I didn’t care about the money. Then I realized that, if Lillian had wanted Fidelia to have the portrait, she would’ve given it to her.
“I’m sorry.” I reached over and clasped Fidelia’s thin wrist, giving it a squeeze. “I can’t do that. At least, not right now. I have to figure out what Lillian wanted me to do with the painting.”
Fidelia hung her head again. “I knew you’d say that.”
I looked down at Socrates, who had finished his donut and was licking his chops. He had no sympathy for Fidelia, either. He believed in self-reliance. Shaking his big head, just slightly, he wandered back to the fireplace.
Tinkleston didn’t seem to find Fidelia spunky enough, either. He was on the icebox, clearly trying to decide whether to pounce and shake her up a bit.
“Fidelia?” I ventured. “Were you in Flynt Mansion when I took the painting? And the other day, when my sister, my friend, and I were there?”
“I don’t have a lot of money, and I have nowhere to go,” she said in a whisper. “I knew the house was empty, so I moved out of my expensive hotel and into the mansion the minute the police took the tape down. I’ve been staying there until I figure out what to do next.”
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