A Deadly Snow Fall

by Cynthia Gallant-Simpson

  “Oh, no; I hated that man and wouldn’t have done a thing to please him, but he offered me the opportunity to vex him.” Emily smiled. “The few times he came here, I could see he really believed I could help him. Well, I suppose he was just so desperate he was ready to try anything.”

  “It occurs to me, Emily, other than an exorcism, how would one get rid of pesky ghosts?”

  “That’s not really my territory, but in my profession you do hear about other similar…sciences. I’ve heard that the most successful method is to burn them out. Burn the place they have come to inhabit and that sends them off to their final resting place.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. I was sure that Emily had passed that information along to Mary Malone. However, would she admit it to the authorities? Not that it would help poor Mary at that point. However, it would help to solve the mystery of the arson of the Snow house.

  “Did you ever tell Mary Malone that?”

  “Yes, Mary inquired. Why do you ask?”

  I looked at my watch and rose, thanked Emily for her time and rushed away on the excuse that I had a dentist appointment. What I needed was an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist.

  I left the Fairies in the Garden shop gulping fresh air like a woman drowning. Now, if only I believed that Edwin had been so driven to distraction by the so-called “ghosts” that he had chosen to jump to his death, all the mysteries would be solved. But I knew better.

  Like the pieces of colored glass in a kaleidoscope, a design began to form in my over-taxed mind. I walked to MacMillan Wharf and sat in the warm sun on a bench surrounded by squawking seagulls. My mind was on over-drive. If Emily had found out about the missing Estrella, knowing what a threat she had been to Edwin, set up to walk away with his inheritance, why not try blackmail on the old man? Assuming, as Emily would have, that Edwin had killed the gold-digger, Estrella. However, might there be another club Emily had used on the old man? Before I could pursue that, I needed one more solid piece of evidence for my theory.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I sat in the Chief’s office while he reminisced. I’d brought him his favorite cranberry pecan scones and he told me about his dead wife Trudy. Then, he moved along to the period a few years later in his time as a widower when he was ready to meet another woman.

  “You know, when that pretty little lady first came to town, I was a recent widower. Trudy had been dead for almost two years and I was feeling mighty lonely. Trudy always told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was to find me a new wife to take care of me should she pre-decease me. Well, let me tell you, it didn’t seem right, but then pretty little Emily Sunshine showed up. Truly a ray of welcome sunshine. Summoning up all my courage one day, I asked her out to dinner.”

  “Good for you Chief. How did it go?”

  “It didn’t. Turned me down flat. Oh, she was sweet and kind but she said she just didn’t date. She gave no reason but with my self-confidence being pretty fragile at the time, I never asked again. Never asked anyone.”

  “Oh, Chief, any woman would be lucky to get you. Time to try again.” I didn’t add, but definitely not Emily because I expect she will soon be in either the state penitentiary or the state hospital for the criminally insane.

  James appeared with Emily at his side. She’d been away at a gift show in Atlanta and had just alighted from the Greyhound Bus as James passed on his way back to the station. James had seen the sign on the Fairies in the Garden shop when he went, on the Chief’s orders, to bring her in for questioning. It said that she’d be back on Tuesday, but although it was Tuesday, James had no idea of when to expect her. He was headed back to report when there she was. Inviting her to come with him because the Chief wanted to speak with her, she’d left her suitcase in the pharmacy with Miquette, the pharmacist, and went along.

  “Good day, Emily. Just a few questions.” The Chief stood, gentlemanly. I hoped his sights were not set once again on dating the little woman whose sidekick was a crystal ball. It did, however, occur to me that Emily might be incapacitated without her trusty companion, Eloise. I’d never had a conversation with her minus the glassy controlling orb.

  The Chief, naturally, led off the questioning. “Emily we need to talk about your relationship to Edwin Snow III. Just take your time and tell it like it was. Everything you can remember about what Edwin talked about when he came to you for help when he was troubled and anxious.” The Chief pulled the ever-present bottle of aspirins and accompanying glass of tap water toward him.

  After a brief pause, during which Emily flicked a piece of lint off of her violet linen jacket, checked her curls that never moved because of copious amounts of hair spray and smoothed her white skirt, she spoke. What came out did so like a corked volcano suddenly free to burst its top, to the utter surprise of us all. I wondered if Emily had been preparing herself for this moment and could hold back the roaring lava no longer.

  “Miserable of old miser. Laughed at me when I told him who I was. Wouldn’t part with a nickel for his own flesh and blood. Got what he deserved. I gave him my birth certificate and a letter from my mother, but still he refused to accept my story. I hated the man. Hated him. Got even by toying with his little egg head.”

  This took the poor unprepared Chief by total surprise. As if hoping to escape the lava flow, he rolled his chair back a few feet until it was stopped by the bookcase behind him, toppling two books onto the floor.

  James interjected when it looked as if the Chief was having difficulty finding words to lob back at Emily. “So Emily, you were blackmailing Edwin because your mother, Rosita Gonsalves, told you he was your father but he refused to recognize that fact. Correct?”

  “He was also going to make my mother look like a common whore in that stupid book he was writing. I meant to see to it that he didn’t do that. I just wanted what was rightfully mine.”

  Chief Henderson, at last in control of his voice, motioned to James to let him take over. “Did you attempt to blackmail Edwin Snow, Emily?”

  “At first, yes. But that was going nowhere so I had to change my tactic.”

  “I am told that you sometimes vexed Edwin. Purposely upset the old man. Was that part of your new tactic, Emily?” This from me from my interviews with the tiny but mighty lady.

  “I wasn’t sure where it was going, Chet, at that time. I just knew that I was getting even for what he did to my mother. Anyone would have done the same. Rich as Croesus he was and yet he never sent us a dime. We’d have starved before Mom married that sweaty stinking hog farmer if Mary hadn’t sent us those checks every month.” Emily was nearly foaming at the mouth.

  “When was the last time Edwin came to your shop, Emily?”

  “Let’s see, that would have been the night before he…jumped from the Monument, Chet.”

  “What was the reason for his visit on that night, Emily?”

  “He wanted something, some information that only Eloise could provide.”

  “You will need to tell me what that was. In detail, Emily. Do you understand? Every word that you can recall.”

  “Certainly, Chet. I am a good citizen and if I can help, then, I certainly will.” This abrupt change from flaming lava to perfect citizen didn’t fool me. The woman who knew, as Daphne had said, “where all the bodies are buried in this town,” although she meant to be sarcastic, held the best hand in this card game. I was becoming a font of metaphors.

  “Please, remember, Emily, that you must tell us the truth so that we can help you if you are innocent.”

  “Innocent? Innocent of what, Chet?” Emily actually looked confused. But, as I had seen her in the course of her so-called “profession,” I knew that she was an Academy Award class actress.

  “Emily, I may as well tell you that someone saw Edwin Snow at your back door on the night of the snowstorm. You say he was there the night before his death, but it seems he also showed up shortly before his fall from the Pilgrim Monument. Is that true?”

  Emily coughed and then cont
inued in a shaky voice. “Eloise was having an off night when he came that first time. He couldn’t get what he needed, so he returned the following night. He was troubled by his memory’s loss of some important names and dates for his silly book and wanted Eloise to contact Edward Granger.” Emily took a deep breath. “That’s when I got the idea.”

  “The idea?” The Chief reached for the aspirins, but realized that he’d just taken two and put back the bottle. “You know, Emily, somehow I cannot imagine anything being important enough for the frail old man to wander into town during a terrible snowfall.”

  “He did. Do you want to hear this or not, Chet?”

  Emily was becoming the inquisitor. Could she get away with taking over the investigation? I wondered.

  “Proceed.” Chief Henderson put his aching feet up on the stool under his desk and leaned back as if preparing for a tall tale. Two hundred and twenty-five feet tall, I wondered.

  “I quickly decided that I could get even with him for all the misery he’d caused me and my dear mother over the years. As I’ve struggled to hold my business together through good times and bad, increasing rents and higher and higher heating and electric bills, he just sat around counting his money and doing no good with it.” Her voice rose to a crescendo as she twisted the handkerchief in her hands as if she was wringing her denying father’s puny neck.

  “So, I looked into Eloise and”

  Chief Henderson groaned audibly. “Sorry, Emily; go on. Just please, do stick to the facts.”

  I was tempted to remind him that Emily’s so-called “facts” came from a galaxy far, far away. But instead, I held my tongue.

  “The plan to finally get even came to me in such a rush I felt dizzy. Looking into Eloise’s face, I told Edwin that Edward Granger had a message for him, a very important message. The old man’s face lit up like a Fourth of July firecracker and I knew I had him. Funny thing is, at that point I wasn’t exactly sure of how I was going to do it, but I was sure that the good fairies would watch over and guide me to a solution. Not for getting the money I deserved. No, that was a lost cause by then. But at least I could get my soupçon of revenge.”

  “Emily, does this idea include getting the old man to climb all the way up the Pilgrim Monument?”

  “I’ll get to that, Chet.” Emily gave the man a look of annoyance as if she might be cheated out of her full performance. Checking her plastic curls, once again, she continued.

  “Actually, I didn’t need Eloise that night. I let her rest and I took over although, of course, Edwin thought she was contacting that drunken artist Edward Granger.”

  “What on earth could you have told Edwin that would have convinced an old man to climb way up there, Miss Emily?” The chief moved forward to the edge of his chair, cigar burning down in his ashtray right under the “No Smoking in Public Buildings” sign.

  Emily’s smile had the quality of a snake eyeing a tasty mouse directly in its path.

  “It was just so simple. I told him that everything he needed was safe in a journal the artist had hidden up in the Monument in a secure place and it was just waiting for him.”

  We all gasped. Emily sat like the Cheshire cat. Was she purring?

  The Chief used the old inquisitor’s trick of saying nothing thus unnerving the suspect which, according to the police interrogators’ manual, usually brought forth jewels. Eventually the little woman could bear it no longer and spoke.

  “You know how old people are. That night, despite the snow, Edwin Snow just had to have a few bits of information that only a dead man, Edward Granger, knew. Edwin was dying, the doctor had told him. So, he had to rush to finish the book.”

  The Chief groaned--either in physical or mental pain. “So, you convinced the old man to climb with you to find these secret journals that you knew were not there. That sounds a bit silly, Emily.”

  “Not so silly Chet, when you consider that I hated the old man and anything that annoyed him pleased me. I knew where the key was in your office because I’d worked here cleaning when I first came to town. Remember that, Chet?”

  Chief Chet nodded.

  “I slipped in the back door that is never locked because of the public restrooms. Only I knew that the door to the main hallway was also unlocked. It was easy. I knew all the secrets from my time here. I slipped in and took the key to the Monument and slipped out undetected.”

  The Chief looked over his shoulder at the pegboard where at least a hundred keys hung on key chains, bits of string and what appeared to be plastic tie wraps. He shook his head in disbelief. Or admiration?

  Chief Henderson suddenly swung the boat around onto a new track and threw us all into a muddle, if not the sea.

  “Tell me, Emily, that crystal ball of yours, it’s just a lot of show business, right?”

  “Chet, that lump on your hip is benign. Don’t worry about it anymore. Don’t waste your time and money on having it biopsied. It’s just a pocket of stray fat. Happens with age, particularly in men with gout.”

  The Chief did a double take and coughed to cover his astonishment. Actually, the week before, the Chief had driven all the way to Hyannis to have the suspicious lump biopsied and the report had come in just that morning. The doctor had told him on the phone just minutes before James arrived with Emily, Don’t worry Chet the lump is just a pocket of stray fat, happens later in life.

  I decided that I’d better jump in before the situation steered too far off track and Emily was giving us all health advice. “So you and Edwin climbed up at the top of the Monument and you hit him with what, a baseball bat, a metal rod? Then, tossed him over. Right, Emily?”

  “Ah, you have a fine imagination, Liz. You ought to write mysteries; you have a knack. Must be from reading all those silly cozies you and your friends read instead of serious literature. Softens the brain to read such drivel but those cozy writers do make a nice bit of change selling that foolishness. No, Liz, that was not quite what happened. You see, I am not a murderer although you would all like to think so.”

  If surprise could have a sound, it rang loudly and clearly around the Chief’s office at that moment. Like a bell rung too close to the ear, Emily’s statement of denial shook us all equally. But something that popped into my head at that moment troubled me far more

  What if clever Emily named Eloise as the killer of Edwin Snow III? A very fine ploy for an insanity defense if ever there was one. I was sure at that moment that that was exactly what the woman had in mind. You had to be pretty foxy to get people to pay for what she offered them in the guise of “science.” If anything, Emily was a wily fox

  The Chief spoke. “All right, Emily, just take us through what happened the night old Edwin climbed the Monument believing that there was a journal waiting up there for him. Just take us along with you and him, step by step. If you didn’t murder him, then you’d better have a pretty good explanation of how he ended up dead on the snow with his skull cracked. I can tell you, based on a credible source, that the man’s head was smashed in before he landed. So, if you didn’t crack him on the head and he didn’t smash in his own head, then how did the poor man’s skull end up like a broken egg? Before he hit the ground.”

  Interesting, I thought, how the egg reference kept cropping up in discussing Edwin Snow. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

  Emily sat up straighter. “I do admit to considering killing him. After all, he denied being my father, denied me my rightful inheritance, insulted me repeatedly and scorned my dear mother. However….”

  “Let’s just cancel the dramatics, Emily, and cut to the chase.”

  Emily nodded at the Chief. “Before I closed up the shop and left for the Pilgrim Monument, I put an axe in my backpack, just in case. I keep it for chopping ice off the sidewalk so my customers don’t slip. I didn’t actually believe that I’d have the courage to use it, but it was like a security blanket. The snow was coming down hard as the appointed hour approached. Part of me hoped that Edwin would chicken out on such a terrib
le night, but part of me believed that he wouldn’t dare. He needed what Eloise had promised him if he was going to complete that silly book before he died. The clock was ticking.”

  “So, you helped him climb all those stairs not sure what you were going to do when you got to the top, right?”

  “Not quite. I refused to tell him which stone the journal was hidden behind. Eloise had told me, I told Edwin, so he’d need me there to identify it. I offered to go up first, find the hiding place and remove the journal. Then, he’d come up.”

  “Wait, why did he fall for that, Emily? I mean, you could have found it and brought it to him. Why climb himself at his age and in his condition?”

  “Lack of trust. Old Edwin was agreeable to letting me go first to find it, but he didn’t trust me to bring it to him. Of course, I played it just right to instill that idea in his head. He was afraid I’d steal it and publish it myself. Edwin trusted no one.”

  The Chief groaned. James shifted his feet and I just sat there incredulous to think how this seemingly harmless woman could twist people around her finger and wondering if we’d ever know the real truth. Chief motioned for Emily to continue.

  “By the time I arrived at the Monument, I had a half hour to climb and get ready for the old miser. I even, briefly, began to feel sorry for him. But that wasted feeling quickly passed. The man had caused me years of misery so he deserved what he got, snow or not.”

  “Get back to the axe, Emily.”

  Emily smiled her most ingratiating smile at Chet. “Waiting for the old man, I reached around and felt the axe in my pack and wondered if I, like Lizzie Borden, could give her father forty whacks.”

  “Emily!”

  “Sorry, Chief. It was very dark. No lights around the top since the town budget slashed them. Used to be so nice looking up at the beacon glowing over the town every night. However, strangely enough, there was a full moon that night and even though the snow was still falling, it managed to shine through faintly. Like a weak spotlight hidden in the shadows, it passed through my mind that it would be fun to pretend that I was Edward Granger. I could speak to Edwin in a deep voice and really scare the beans out of him. He was so easy to frighten.” Emily smiled but the Chief frowned.