Some Enchanted Murder

by Linda S. Reilly

  “Anyway, it’s a pretty big job, so they won’t be able to finish it today. Do you mind being my chauffeur for another day?”

  “Of course not.” Then, cautiously, “Not to beat an old rug again, but are you sure you want to invest that much in the Caddy?” It killed me to see her pour that kind of cash into a car with well over a hundred thou on it.

  She flashed me a look. “I’m not giving up Marty’s car, so don’t even go there.”

  We finished up our lunches. I passed on dessert while Aunt Tressa slugged back another cinnamon coffee and a slab of coconut cream pie.

  “Why don’t I give you a ride back?” I said. “It’s getting too chilly to walk.”

  Aunt Tressa buttoned up her coat. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  The public parking lot for people who worked downtown was located across the street behind the Hazleton post office. We scooted across Center Street at the crosswalk.

  On the next corner was an antique shop that had opened several years ago—From Trunk to Treasure. I’d poked around in there on numerous occasions. Once or twice I’d picked up a kitschy trinket for my office. Today, a homemade sign posted in the huge, glass front window caught my gaze.

  COME IN AND BROWSE—NEWLY ACQUIRED ITEMS FROM THE EDGAR DWARDENE ESTATE

  “Isn’t that interesting,” I said.

  “Let’s pop in.”

  Before I could respond, my aunt was barreling through the front door.

  I guess we were going in.

  On the windowsill, just inside the store, sat a cut glass candy dish filled with wrapped red-and-white mints. I snagged one, unwrapped it, and popped it into my mouth, then slid the cellophane into my coat pocket.

  A plump, seventy-something woman with jeweled eyeglasses immediately rushed over to us. It made me wonder if we were the first customers she’d had all day.

  “Hello, I’m Moira Tatum,” the woman gushed. “Please feel free to look around. I’ll be happy to answer any questions. Did you see our sign in the window? Just this morning we got in some fascinating artifacts from the Dwardene mansion!”

  “Yes, we noticed,” I said. “In fact, we saw a moving truck leaving the Dwardene house early this morning. You certainly managed to get everything set up quickly.”

  “Oh, well, not much of it is in the shop yet. The larger pieces are still in the back room, and there’s much more to come. The moving truck has already been here twice. Thank heaven we have a huge storage area on the other side of this building. But anyway, let me show you some of the smaller items. I’ve already begun setting up a display.” With a sly little grin, she crooked a finger, enticing us to follow.

  In the rear of the shop, an entire corner had been devoted to the Dwardene estate.

  “Several small boxes of miscellaneous items came in this morning with the larger items,” Moira explained. “Oh, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them! I adore rummaging through people’s old baubles and such. Imagine my delight when I saw so many personal things! Phonograph records, letters, you name it. If you see anything you like, just give a holler, and we’ll work out a fair price.”

  We both thanked Moira, and she left us to browse on our own. I glanced at my watch. “We can spend about fifteen minutes here, then we’ve got to make like a Hollywood power couple and split,” I told Aunt Tressa.

  “Suits me,” she said distractedly. She sauntered over to a rack that held old vinyl records and began flipping through the albums.

  I homed in on some wooden boxes—each about a foot square and half as deep—that rested on a rectangular table.

  The first box contained a myriad of assorted junk. Letter openers. Tattered bookmarks. A slew of vintage buttons. Nothing that really jingled my chimes.

  The second box was far more intriguing, the contents more personal. Fishing through, I found about a dozen old date books. Each one was black and had the words Hazleton Savings Bank imprinted on the front in elegant gold leaf, with the year imprinted below that.

  Curious, I opened the one labeled 1950. Several entries had been made on each page. In places the ink was badly faded, almost indecipherable. But most of the entries were quite legible, composed in a firm hand. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the lunch dates, medical appointments and the like that filled the date book. It was the handwriting itself that caught my attention.

  It was the same flowery script that composed the valentine Lou had given to Aunt Tressa.

  Setting the date book aside, I dug deeper in the box. Toward the bottom, I discovered a small stack of dog-eared cards tied with a now threadbare ribbon. I pulled it out carefully. When I saw what they were, I smiled—old report cards from Hazleton Elementary School. Leaving the ribbon intact for fear it might disintegrate, I flipped gently through the stack. At the top of each card, the student’s name had been written in block let

  ters—Kenneth Dwardene.

  Kenneth.

  I didn’t recall his name from the title search. I wondered what branch he occupied on the Dwardene family tree.

  “Hey, App, get a load of this.”

  I looked over and saw Aunt Tressa holding up a turquoise box, about seven inches square. It was a set of records—old forty-fives—from the musical South Pacific.

  “That’s quite a rare find, I’m told.” Mrs. Tatum had come up behind us holding a large painting, which she propped on the floor against a nearby sideboard. “I’m not an expert on records, but I know this is a very special collection.”

  “This musical came out around the time I was born,” Aunt Tressa said. “I saw a local production of it in Manchester when I was a teenager. It was good, but according to my grandmother, it certainly wasn’t Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza.”

  Moira’s eyes rolled dreamily. “I was a young girl when the play first hit Broadway. I never got to New York to see it, but I saw the movie years later.” She sighed. “How sad it was, yet how wonderfully romantic. All those beautiful songs! I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days afterward.”

  I was preparing to signal to Aunt Tressa that we needed to leave when I spotted something else in the box—a burgundycolored leather journal. As Moira waxed nostalgic about the musical, I pulled out the journal and perused the pages. Like the date books, the entries had been composed in the same flowery handwriting as the valentine.

  “Excuse me.” I gently interrupted Moira. “May I buy this?”

  Moira lowered her eyeglasses and squinted at the journal. “Why, certainly. How does twenty dollars sound?”

  “Would ten be okay?”

  She smiled. “Yes, I guess ten would be fine. I assume you mean cash, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  I was opening my handbag, ready to follow Moira to the register, when my gaze landed on the painting she’d propped against the sideboard. For a moment, my breath caught. It was a portrait, done in oils, of an absolutely stunning young woman. The artist had portrayed her seated on a tufted sofa, her legs tucked delicately beneath her. A waterfall of golden hair, pinned back above each ear with a pair of yellow bows, flowed over her slender shoulders. The bright yellow jewel suspended around her neck complemented her sun-colored dress. Her eyes had been painted an almost unnatural blue. In her lap sat a large white cat—a Persian.

  “Ah, I see you’ve spotted the portrait,” Moira said, lowering her voice. She shook her head meaningfully, yet I sensed a lilt in her tone. “This was in the room, you know, when that appraiser was murdered the other day. Terrible thing, wasn’t it?”

  Aunt Tressa stared at the portrait. “Yes, horrible,” she said mechanically.

  Moira’s eyes glittered. “If either of you is interested, I’m sure we could work out a fair price.”

  Aunt Tressa swallowed but said nothing. She seemed speechless, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “Do you know who the artist was?” I asked, put off by the woman’s keenness to wring even a modest profit out of the murder.

  Moira grinned. “Why yes, it was Frederic
Dwardene. I believe he was Edgar Dwardene’s uncle. He was quite a fine artist in his day, I understand.”

  I stooped down to get a closer look at the signature. In the bottom left corner of the painting, the initials FD had been inscribed in black.

  “Well, you ladies take your time. I’ll be up front when you’re ready.”

  After she left, I said to my aunt, “Are you okay?”

  Aunt Tressa nodded slowly. “She’s right, you know. I saw this portrait in the study the day Lou was killed. It was propped against the wall with a bunch of other paintings, right next to the mahogany desk.” She swallowed hard, then reached into her coat pocket. She removed the tattered bow she’d found in Josh’s old clunker and extended it toward the painting.

  Though faded and frayed, it was a dead ringer for the hair bows of the woman in the portrait.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  From the journal of Frederic Dwardene, Tuesday, November 14, 1950:

  I’ve decided to paint her, though I’m sure that even my capable brushstrokes can never truly capture her sweet and tender beauty. I worked on the painting very late tonight, until my eyes could no longer stay open. But when the day comes that I ask her to marry me, I must have it ready to present!

  Aunt Tressa’s realty office was located at the corner of Center and Aubrey, on the second floor of a restored Victorian. Years ago she’d had the opportunity to buy the place, and had even placed a deposit with the seller. Then the inspection report came in. While the house boasted a plethora of charming features, the vintage plumbing and electrical systems weren’t among them. With visions of having to sink a queen’s ransom into renovations, Aunt Tressa passed on the deal. Not long after that, a local periodontist with cash to spare bought the house, restored it to its full glory, and turned it into two offices. Aunt Tressa—Krichner Realty—rented the second story. With its own private entrance in the back, it made the ideal office for her.

  I swung into the driveway and pulled around to the rear park

  ing area, which was reserved for Aunt Tressa’s customers.

  “Oh, no,” Aunt Tressa said.

  One glance in the direction of her office and I immediately saw the source of her dismay. A man in a brown ski jacket and corduroy trousers was sitting on her top step, sobbing his eyes out. It was Wilbur Speen, a young man who lived with his mother in a nearby apartment complex.

  “Poor Wilby,” I said, slamming my gearshift into Park. “We’d better find out what’s wrong.”

  “I can handle it, Apple. You’ll be late getting back.”

  “A few minutes won’t hurt. I’ll let Heidi know.”

  I made a fast call to the office, then followed Aunt Tressa across the parking lot toward the entrance to her office.

  Wilby looked miserable. His eyelids were puffy and swollen, and his runny nose looked like a maraschino cherry.

  My aunt plunked down beside him on the top step and slipped her arm around his shoulders. “Wilby, what’s the matter?” she said kindly. “Why all the tears?”

  Wilby wiped his eyes with the back of his bare hand, then held up a greasy, orange-stained bag marred by a distinct footprint. “My mom gave me money for lunch before she left for work,” he said, his voice laced with sobs. “Seven whole dollars! She said I could buy two pizza slices from the market and I’d still have enough left for a candy bar.”

  I sat on the step on Wilby’s opposite side. “So did you buy the pizza, Wilby?”

  He nodded, then burst into a fresh round of tears. “Yeah. And a chocolate bar with peanuts. I got eleven cents change. Wanna see?”

  “No, we believe you,” Aunt Tressa said. “What happened then? How did your lunch get squished?”

  “When I was leaving the market two boys saw me. They were hanging around outside. I think they were high school kids. I tried to walk around them, but they blocked me. Then one of them, the big one, grabbed my pizza bag and threw it to his friend. I told them to give it back, but they just kept laughing at me and throwing it back and forth and calling me dummy and ‘tardo.’ ”

  This story was making me more furious by the second. “Didn’t anyone try to help you?”

  With a loud sniffle, Wilby shook his head. “No, there wasn’t nobody else around. I tried not to act scared, but I couldn’t help it. I started to cry and cry and cry. It musta made them mad ’cuz then the skinny one grabbed my glove right off my hand. And my house key was in it! Then they stepped on my pizza and ran away with my glove and now I can’t get back in our apartment!”

  Aunt Tressa looked mad enough to spew poison darts from her eyeballs. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “You can spend the afternoon with me. I have some frozen pizza in my fridge upstairs. I’ll microwave one for you. How would that be?”

  Wilby swiped his coat sleeve over his eyes. “Okay. But will you call my mom for me? I’m afraid she might get mad about the key.”

  “She won’t get mad, Wilby,” I said, praying I was right. “She’ll know it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I’ll call your mom and explain everything,” my aunt assured him. “Wilby, did she ever think about getting you a cell phone?”

  He shook his head. “No. Even if I had one, I prob’ly couldn’t figure it out. My mom’s has lots of buttons and stuff on it.”

  “It’s easy. I can show you,” Aunt Tressa said. “I have one at home I’m not using anymore. Why don’t I ask your mom if you can have it? She’ll need to sign you up with a service provider, but I can help with that, too.”

  Wilby’s face brightened. “That would be real good, Miss Tressa. Then if I needed to call my mom or the cops or something, I’d have my own phone.”

  Aunt Tressa smiled and they both stood up. With Wilby’s problem temporarily resolved, I left the two of them and headed back to my office.

  Or at least I started to.

  What stopped me dead was a black-and-white police car blocking my exit, Chief Fenton sitting at the wheel.

  Once again, I put my car in Park and hopped out. I stomped over to the cruiser and waited for Fenton to get out. With agonizing slowness, he opened his door and unfolded his long legs, like a spider crawling out of a drain. I practically lunged at him, pouring out Wilby’s story of harassment by the teenage bullies.

  This time, I had to give the chief credit. He listened carefully, then pulled out a notebook and made some entries. “I’ll look into it, Ms. Mariani. It shouldn’t be too hard to identify these two punks. In fact, I already have a good idea who they might be.”

  “Good. What then?”

  He smiled, but his eyes were granite. “Then I have myself a little confab with their parents, throw a good scare into them. Believe me, after I get through with them they won’t be hassling anyone again for a long, long time.”

  With a shiver, I wondered if he was planning to resurrect the guillotine and use it on the two scalawags. I could see it now. Thwump! Head roll. Thwump! Head roll.

  I thanked him for his help, but my assault wasn’t over. “Now what about Lillian Bilodeau? I called her several times today, and she still doesn’t answer.”

  Fenton regarded me for a calculated moment. “I stopped over there this morning. And you’re right, she still isn’t home. I interviewed some of her neighbors—the few that were home— but no one saw or heard anything useful. An elderly man a couple of trailers away thought he heard a motor idling when he got up in the night to use the, um, facility, but that was about all.”

  “Did he look out the window?”

  Fenton shook his head. “Afraid not.”

  I sagged, and felt my knees wobble. I was more convinced than ever that something bad had happened to Lillian. “Have you called all the area hospitals?”

  “That’s next on my agenda, Ms. Mariani.”

  Then what are you waiting for? I wanted to scream.

  “I assume you’ll call me and let me know what you find out? There aren’t that many hospitals in this vicinity. I shouldn’t think it would take too long for
the police to make a few inquiries.”

  The chief glowered at me for a long moment.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, that is,” I added, trying to soften my approach.

  Fenton shot a look toward Aunt Tressa’s office. “I’ll contact you when we know something,” he said tightly.

  “Thank you, Chief. I appreciate that. For what it’s worth, I think Lillian might have seen who killed Lou Marshall. She acted very subdued when we drove her home on Saturday. She wouldn’t admit anything was bothering her, but I think it’s because she was scared.”

  He pursed his lips for a moment. “You may be right, Ms. Mariani. It’s entirely possible that your friend witnessed a very brutal crime. The preliminary results from the medical examiner showed that whoever stabbed Mr. Marshall did it with massive, aggressive force. Even with a rush of adrenaline, it’s unlikely that a small-boned woman in her eighties could have accomplished that.”

  I opened my mouth to agree, but he held up a finger. “I said it was unlikely, not impossible. We’re still investigating every potential angle. Which brings me to the purpose of my visit. Is Tress—Mrs. Krichner in her office?”

  I hesitated. “Um, yes, she’s there with Wilby. Why?”

  He glared at me. “Why? Because I have some questions for her, that’s why. What are you, her nanny?”

  I felt myself blanch. Why would he say such a thing? Of course I wasn’t her nanny.

  Grappling for an answer, I managed to stutter out, “I … I don’t want you upsetting her, that’s all. She’s been through enough these past few days.”

  “I’ll take that into consideration, Ms. Mariani,” he said, with an annoying little smirk. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of upsetting any of my suspects.”

  “Aunt Tressa is not a suspect,” I flung back, “because she didn’t do anything wrong. And you’re blocking my car. I’m already late getting back to work.”

  He gave a sharp nod. “I’ll be out of your way in a moment. But know this: until I have the murderer or murderess in custody, everyone is a suspect. That includes you, Ms. Mariani.”