Miz Duffield sniffed once again, but only at half power, so I decided that I’d been diplomatic enough. “Obviously, I picked the right person to talk to. It sounds as if you know just about everything that goes on in and around this house.”
“That I do. And the Walterses trust me to respect their privacy.”
“Of course, and I wouldn’t dream of asking you to violate that if Big Bill hadn’t asked me to get involved.” Okay, he hadn’t really asked me, but he had agreed, which was close enough to satisfy my conscience. “Have you seen anything suspicious, any signs that somebody would want to harm Big Bill?”
“Big Bill Walters is one of the leading citizens in Byerly,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”
“Granted, but that doesn’t make him an easy man to work for.” I was watching her carefully when I said that, but she didn’t show signs of any emotion other than indignation.
“On the contrary,” she said, “I’ve always found Mr. Big Bill to be an exemplary employer.”
Clearly, if she was disgruntled about anything, she wasn’t going to admit it to me. “I’m glad to hear that. What about other people? We both know that any man in Big Bill’s position attracts enemies, like…” I struggled for an appropriate metaphor. “Like hyenas trying to bring down a lion.” Okay, it wasn’t Shakespeare—it wasn’t even good Disney—but it seemed to satisfy her.
“That’s true. There are always lesser individuals trying to denigrate him. There’s one woman—of course, I hate to indulge in idle gossip…”
The look she gave me was as good as an engraved invitation to push, so I obliged her. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have taken note of simple gossip.”
She smiled tightly. “There is one woman who’s been a frequent visitor to the house, a Mrs. Marlyn Roberts. Though she’s perfectly polite when Mrs. Walters is in the room, the second she steps out, Mrs. Roberts makes impertinent comments about her and speculates about the family’s finances and business practices in the most vulgar fashion imaginable.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “Do you think she has anything against Big Bill?”
“Apparently so. Mrs. Roberts’s former husband had business dealings of some sort with Mr. Big Bill, and the result was not what she hopped for.”
“That’s interesting.” I didn’t know much about the Roberts family, though I’d heard the name. They were relative newcomers, having moved to Byerly after I went up north. “Is there anybody else? Somebody who left irate messages for Big Bill, perhaps?”
She considered it but said, “No, nothing I can think of.”
The next part was the most delicate, which was why I’d saved it for last. “What about the Walterses themselves? Do they get along well?”
She stiffened and sniffed all at the same time. “Surely you’re not suggesting—”
“Of course not,” I said quickly. “It’s just that people’s actions at home often indicate stresses elsewhere.” I kept going, hoping she wouldn’t think about that piece of psychobabble too hard, because goodness knows it wouldn’t withstand the scrutiny. “Of course, Mrs. Walters’s behavior is always above reproach, but Burt…”
This time I paused significantly to let her prompt me.
She did so eagerly. “Yes?”
“It’s probably nothing, but I’ve heard that Burt hasn’t been paying his wife the attention she deserves, that perhaps he’s developed another kind of interest.” It was amazing how many words I could use without saying a darned thing, but I was fairly sure Miz Duffield could keep up.
“Then you’ve heard about that… that pretty boy at the mill.” She’d gone from indignant to angry. “Mrs. Walters is far too refined to speak of him, but from what Mr. Montgomery has said, it’s plain just what kind of man he is. If you can call him a man. Mr. Burt and that creature have been having a ridiculous number of meetings since the day he arrived in Byerly. Private meetings,” she added, in case I hadn’t gotten the message.
“Do you really think Burt and he are seeing each another?”
“So far, there have been no signs on Mr. Burt’s belongings,” she said, which was tantamount to a confession that she’d been checking his clothes for evidence, “and certainly Mr. Burt has never shown such leanings before, but he wouldn’t be the first man to have been led astray.”
The rumor about Burt and his friend was old news, but I realized that this was the second time Miz Duffield had mentioned Tavis Montgomery.
“Is Mr. Montgomery here often?” I asked.
“Quite often. As I mentioned before, Mrs. Walters has been working on the Halloween carnival with him, and they’ve become good friends. He’s been such a comfort to her, what with the situation with Mr. Burt. He’s a very personable man, Mr. Montgomery, and quite handsome.”
I couldn’t tell if Miz Duffield had a crush on Tavis herself, or was merely sizing him up as an appropriate next marriage for Dorcas. I also had to wonder if Tavis was just being a good friend to Dorcas, or keeping her busy so Burt could do whatever it was he was doing, or something else. With Tavis, it was almost certainly something that would help him advance in the world.
“Thank you, Miz Duffield. You’ve certainly given me food for thought,” I said.
“I’m always happy to do anything I can for Mr. Big Bill or Mrs. Walters.”
She hadn’t included Burt’s name, making it painfully obvious where her loyalties were. That actually made Burt look less likely as a suspect. If Miz Duffield had known about him doing anything remotely suspicious, she’d happily have spilled the beans.
Chapter 10
“I know this place is big,” Richard said when I finally got back upstairs with our Cokes, “but I didn’t think it would take you this long to find the kitchen.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said loftily, “while you were lounging around, I was interrogating one of our suspects.”
“Got out the rubber hose, did you?”
“No, but I thought I was going to have to for a minute. Getting information out of Miz Duffield was like pulling teeth.”
“She couldn’t have survived working for the Walterses all these years if she wasn’t discreet.”
“I suppose not. I did pry some stuff out of her.” I told him about Mrs. Roberts, the additional gossip about Big Bill and his protégé, and how Tavis was spending a lot of time with Dorcas. “I don’t know if any of it helps, but—”
“Is that Marlyn Roberts?” Richard asked.
“I think that’s what Miz Duffield said her first name is. Why?”
“Because while you were gadding about, I read a number of irate letters from a Marlyn Roberts.” He held up a stack of perhaps a dozen.
“Let me see!” He handed them over, and I started skimming. When I was done, I said, “I don’t know, Richard. She’s threatened legal action, not personal violence.”
“True, but you have to admit that the letters get progressively more angry.”
According to the letters, Marlyn’s husband had bought some land from Big Bill, land that had previously been leased by a fuel oil business. The husband had established several other businesses on that land, but they’d all failed. The husband and Marlyn then got divorced, and I had to wonder if the business failures and the divorce were related. In any case, as part of the divorce settlement, the land went to Marlyn, and she wanted to sell it. The problem was, it flunked the prospective buyer’s inspection. The land was contaminated with oil, and it would cost a small fortune to clean up. Marlyn was blaming Big Bill, and wanted him to pay for the cleanup or, failing that, to buy the land back. Big Bill refused to do either.
“You’re right,” I said. “This last letter is pretty nasty. Marlyn is threatening to send the EPA, the newspaper, and a pack of lawyers after Big Bill.” I wrinkled my nose. “Do you suppose he really sold contaminated land?”
“Don’t ask me; he’s your uncle.”
“Only by marriage. And he wasn’t my uncle when this happened.”
“A techni
cality. Besides, it doesn’t matter if he did it or not. Mrs. Roberts believes that he did.”
“True, but it still doesn’t seem like a good motive for murder. What good would killing him do? He can’t pay for the cleanup or buy her land if he’s dead.”
“No, but his heirs could. Didn’t you say that Marlyn is a friend of Dorcas’s? Maybe she was counting on Dorcas to do the right thing once Big Bill is out of the way.”
“Good point. We’ll put her on our list. What else have you found?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.” He hefted a thick sheaf of letters. “These are all from one guy, and the last one came last month.”
“One guy?” I said. “Who?”
“Andrew Herron. Do you know him?”
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “I don’t think so.”
“Good. This one makes me nervous. Take a look.”
I read the first letter on the stack. “I see what you mean. He’s angry, all right, but I can’t quite figure out what he’s fussing about. Big Bill stole his ancestral lands?”
“Apparently. As far as I can tell, Herron’s mother sold her house and some farm land to Big Bill.”
“And?”
“That’s it. Herron wants the land back.”
“Why? I mean, why does he think Big Bill should return it?”
Richard pulled out a letter and read from it:
“On the grounds of human decency and humanity, if a man like you can understand those most meaningful of concepts. Or are you a man at all, and not just a vampiric monster, sucking the blood from defenseless women? The Bible says not to suffer a witch to live, and surely an undead fiend is even less worthy.”
“Both threatening and badly written. How long has this guy been sending letters?”
“As long as Big Bill has been keeping this file. Herron sends another every few months, with especially nasty ones near Christmas and Mother’s Day. He’s added a web site to the letterhead in the most recent letters, and I shudder to think about what’s on it.”
“Okay, put him on the list, too.”
“At the very top,” Richard said. “That’s what I’ve got so far.”
I looked at the stack of paper still remaining and sighed. “Okay, let’s keep at it.”
That’s what we did for the next several hours, other than a short break for lunch. Richard went down to the kitchen that time and managed to charm Miz Duffield into fixing us some sandwiches.
We finally made it through the stack at three-thirty or so and had three more reasonable candidates: a woman suffering from brown lung after working at Walters Mill; a man whose home had been foreclosed on by Byerly First National Bank, which Big Bill owned; and a contractor who said Big Bill had fired him without cause. There was also a list of people we didn’t think were all that likely, but who might rate some consideration.
“I wonder if all business tycoons have this many enemies,” I said when we finished.
“And I thought academia was cutthroat. Some of these make the latest debates between Stratfordians and Oxfordians sound almost civilized.”
“It just makes me feel dirty.”
Richard waggled his eyebrows. “I know of a much better way to make you feel dirty.”
He reached for me, but I said, “Not in Big Bill’s office. Nursing in here was strange enough.”
“Then might I remind you that Aunt Daphine still has Alice, and Aunt Maggie is probably still at the hospital, which leaves our nice bed at her house available.”
“I’ll drive.”
We hadn’t asked Big Bill if we could take the letters with us, and knowing how particular he was about his privacy, we didn’t risk it. Instead, we made photocopies of the pertinent ones and left the originals on his desk, where we’d found them. Miz Duffield wasn’t in sight, so we left her a note and rushed to Aunt Maggie’s house.
After seven months of parenthood, we’d realized that there’s nothing like having a baby to make you appreciate a little stolen time.
Chapter 11
After an extremely pleasant interlude, I called the hospital to check on Big Bill. Aunt Maggie told me that the necessary arrangements had been made for him to return to the mansion the next day, and I told her that Richard and I would be there to meet him.
Next I called Aunt Daphine to let her know we were on the way to get Alice. She suggested dinner, and we accepted only under the condition that she let us take her out to pay her back for watching Alice all day. That way, I got to go to Pigwick’s Barbecue for Eastern North Carolina-style pulled pork barbecue and claim it was for Aunt Daphine’s benefit.
I’d originally planned to ask Aunt Daphine if she had any thoughts or gossip about the attempts on Big Bill, but the conversation turned to Alice and stayed there for quite a while. Next Aunt Daphine had to brag on Vasti’s little girl, Bitsy, her only grandchild. Then we had various other bits of family news to chew on along with the barbecue.
We might eventually have moved on to Big Bill’s situation if it weren’t for the fact that Pigwick’s is owned by Tim Topper, a friend of ours, and when he spotted us he had to come hear all about Alice and parenthood.
By the time all that was over with, we’d ordered thick slices of apple pie for dessert, and I was no longer in the mood to talk about murder. Part of it was reluctance to discuss such things in a crowded restaurant, and part of it was what Richard had said about our having to watch what we said around Alice. All parents do, of course, but some of our topics of conversation were a little bit different. I wondered how cops and private detectives handled the problem with their families.
There was only one thing that happened that was even remotely related to Richard’s and my investigation, and at the time, I didn’t realize it. Alice got cranky when I was about halfway through with my pie, and I refused Aunt Daphine’s offers to take her, assuring her that I was used to eating while soothing a baby. As I arranged Alice on my lap, I noticed a man sitting by himself in the corner. I probably wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been polite and taken off his ball cap. An awful lot of men seem to think it’s okay to wear their caps inside, but this man had put his on the empty chair beside him. Still, manners weren’t so rare that I would have paid any attention to him if he hadn’t had the oddest-shaped head I’d ever seen. His hair was thinning, and there was a crescent-shaped dent in his head, maybe half an inch deep. Even odder, the man looked familiar.
“Richard,” I said, “wasn’t that man over there at Big Bill and Aunt Maggie’s party?”
“I believe there was more than one man at that party,” he said, but took a look without being obvious. “Oh, the man with the unusual head. That’s him.”
Now I was sure he was a Burnette connection. Friends of the Walterses might get takeout from a barbecue place like Pigwick’s, but they wouldn’t eat there unless they were campaigning for office. Only when I asked Aunt Daphine, she said she didn’t know who he was. I was feeling nosy enough that if he’d paid with a credit card, I might have asked Tim to find out his name, but when the man got up to go, he left cash on the table. I didn’t think about him again, at least not that night.
After dinner, we dropped Aunt Daphine off and headed back to Aunt Maggie’s. By the time I got Alice ready for bed and nursed her, she was sound asleep, and Richard and I weren’t far behind.
Big Bill returned home around midmorning the next day, and I don’t think there was a soul in Byerly who didn’t know it. He was riding in an ambulance, for one, and though I thought they were only supposed to run their sirens during an actual emergency, Burt must have slipped the driver a little something. The lights were flashing and the siren blaring the whole way. Junior was leading the way in her squad car but mercifully kept her siren shut off.
Richard and I were waiting at the house, having picked up Bobbin for Aunt Maggie when we dropped Alice with Aunt Nora. Big Bill’s new nursing staff was there, too, all three dressed in pastel blue drawstring pants with patterned smocks. W
e’d already exchanged introductions with them and chatted a bit.
Richard had told me about his friend Vivian Foster, but he’d never mentioned that the ex-Army nurse was at least six feet tall and built like a tank. Her dark-brown hair was curled as tightly as if she’d ordered it to stay that way.
Vivian was going to be sharing shifts with Anne and Jan Shuford, a much more petite pair who looked remarkably alike. I’d assumed they were sisters, but found out that they had the same last name because they were married to brothers. Apparently they’d gone to Myrtle Beach on leave and fallen for two vacationing Byerly boys. They regularly worked private duty in the area.
The ambulance pulled up, and I took my fingers out of my ears when they finally turned off that noise. Big Bill’s doctor and Aunt Maggie had ridden along, and walked alongside as the attendants wheeled Big Bill into the house. I thought Dr. Patel looked uncomfortable, and wondered if he was completely happy with deceiving people about Big Bill’s condition.
Junior joined Richard and me as we watched the attendants wrestle Big Bill up that lovely spiral staircase. The doctor and Aunt Maggie followed along, and Bobbin had abandoned us to accompany Aunt Maggie.
“Big Bill looks a lot better than I expected him to, considering what I’d heard about his physical condition,” Junior said, looking right at me.
“He’s a tough one,” I said. Then I whispered, “We’ll talk later.” I hadn’t asked Big Bill if it was okay to confide in Junior, mainly because I expected him to tell me not to. So as long as I didn’t ask him, I could tell her what I thought she needed to know, without any arguments. Junior nodded and went upstairs.
Burt and Dorcas must have followed the ambulance from the hospital, because they arrived a minute later, and Burt huffed and puffed his way past us to be with his father. Dorcas stopped to ask, “Did Big Bill make the trip all right?”
“He’s fine,” I assured her.
“Thank goodness. I’ll tell Irene to fix him something to eat. Are you two going to be staying for lunch?”
Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 08 - Wed and Buried Page 9