Some Enchanted Murder

by Linda S. Reilly

  She relented, and fifteen minutes later we had the kitchen looking as freshly scrubbed as an operating room. In other words, the way Aunt Tressa’s kitchen normally looked.

  “What are you going to do about your dinner tomorrow?” I asked.

  She poured each of us a glass of wine and set out a plate of cheese and crackers. “Start over,” she said brightly. “I have more boneless chicken in the fridge, so it’s no biggie. Hey, can you believe it? Jack doesn’t like veggies in his pot pie either, so it’ll just be chicken and tiny white potatoes in a luscious gravy, with a flaky biscuit topping. And for dessert I’m making a decadent chocolate mousse cake.”

  “Sounds like you’ve met your culinary soul mate,” I said in a resigned tone. For someone who claimed she didn’t like to cook, everything she made always tasted delicious.

  “Have you decided if you’re going to invite Daniel?” She took a sip from her wine goblet.

  Daniel.

  Hearing his name sent an avalanche of guilt through me. I still hadn’t called to fill him in about the strange phone call from Lillian.

  “I haven’t had time to think about it,” I hedged. “Right now I’m more worried about you. I sense that you’re a bit … well, infatuated with Darby, and it scares me. A little voice in my head tells me he’s hiding something. I only wish I knew what it was.”

  Slowly and precisely, Aunt Tressa set down her glass. “Apple, this has got to stop.”

  Her tone had gone flat, setting off an alarm in my head. “What’s got to stop?”

  “This excessive worrying about me. You’ve been doing it for a long time and it’s gotten out of control. I want it to end. Now.”

  I felt a hard lump swirl inside my stomach. My aunt had never spoken to me this way.

  “It started when I had the cancer scare three years ago,” she went on. “Thank God that turned out to be nothing, but ever since then you’ve been treating me like one of those delicate animals made from hand-blown glass.”

  Had I wandered into some crazy time warp? Another dimension in space?

  “What are you saying?” My voice rattled. “That I shouldn’t care about you? That I shouldn’t worry about what happens to you?”

  “Of course not.” Aunt Tressa’s tone softened. “Listen, I know I can be off-the-wall at times. But I’m a grown woman who’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and of making her own decisions. Especially when it comes to gentleman callers.”

  I swallowed, but the painful lump in my throat refused to budge. All this time, I’d had no idea Aunt Tressa felt this way. Why hadn’t she told me this before?

  The answer was obvious. She was afraid of hurting my feelings, of wounding my ego. I shook my head, willing away the tears that were trying to burst through the gates.

  “It must’ve been awful, the day you found out Dad was never coming back. That you were stuck with me,” I added bitterly. I was in full pity mode, now, dredging up ancient history as if it had all happened yesterday.

  Her expression morphed into something I’d never seen before—a cross between amusement and fury. “You mean the day I realized it was going to be just you and me against the world, to put it bluntly? The day good ole Vince Mariani hauled his sorry patootie off to Vegas and never looked back?” She sat back and grinned at me, a distinct gleam in her eye. “Oh, yeah, that was quite the banner day.”

  “I remember it too,” I said softly. “Not as distinctly as you, maybe, but there’s one thing I’ll never forget.”

  She leaned forward, serious now. “What was that?”

  “The day before he left for good, Dad drove me over to my friend Ashley’s to play. I think he was sick of seeing me mope around and sniffle, always asking him when Mom was coming back. You’d been staying with us for a while—”

  “Eight days,” Aunt Tressa confirmed.

  “But I hadn’t warmed up to you. All I wanted was my mother. Anyway, when he picked me up from Ashley’s that day, the first thing I asked him when I hopped into the car was, Did Mommy call yet? That did it—he exploded. He started shrieking at me that she was never coming back and that I’d better get used to it, because there was nothing he could do about it.”

  “I never knew that,” Aunt Tressa said.

  I sucked in a long, calming breath. “I started to bawl, and I couldn’t stop. I kept sobbing and sobbing. We happened to be driving past Mrs. Howell’s place when he told me about Mom— you know that old clapboard house with the circular window at the top? I’ve hated that house ever since. Any time I drive by it I look the other way.”

  I paused to take a sip of wine, until I realized it didn’t appeal to me at all. “When we got home, Dad got out of the car and stormed into the house. He left me sitting there alone, crying. Eventually I cried myself out and went inside.” I looked away.

  “Apparently I didn’t close the porch door all the way.”

  Aunt Tressa blanched. “Oh, no.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t say the rest because my throat was clogged, but she already knew what happened. My adorable tortoiseshell cat, Pebbles, who’d always stayed inside, managed to sneak out. Dad found her the next morning. She’d been run over by a car.

  “You blamed yourself for that, didn’t you?” Aunt Tressa said.

  “Yes! It was my fault—I left the door open!”

  “It was not your fault. Your father shouldn’t have left you in the car. You were seven, for pity’s sake. If I’d known he did that I’d have ripped him open a new one with a rusty can opener.”

  “Dad left that day and never looked back,” I said. “I don’t recall ever asking for him, though, or wondering if he was coming home again.”

  “You didn’t.” Aunt Tressa leaned closer and crossed her arms on the table. “You turned sullen, painfully quiet. I wasn’t sure whattodo.”

  I swiped at my damp eyes. “Poor Aunt Tress. Young and single, stuck with a sad little girl who only wanted her mother. I can’t imagine what was going through your head.”

  “I wasn’t sure myself, frankly.” Aunt Tressa drained her wine glass. “At first I wondered what in the name of Sergeant Pepper I’d gotten myself into. I knew my brother well, and I had little doubt that he was gone for the long haul. I decided I had two choices.”

  I laughed. “Was one of them the orphanage?”

  She waved a hand at me. “Get out. Option one was to deliver you to my mom and dad’s house. They’d have fussed over you and cooked for you—Lord, they’d have had a field day taking care of you.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Look, my folks were wonderful people, but they were very set in their old-fashioned ways. Plus, they both had health issues.” She swallowed and shook her head. “But that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was that I was selfish, so I chose option two—to keep the little girl I’d already grown to love as if she were my own. It took me all of about ten seconds to reach that decision.”

  My eyes filled with tears. “I remember now. That was the first time you made the kooky macaroni.”

  “I didn’t know what to give you for supper that night, so I had to make do with what was on hand. You were a fussbudget, but you liked macaroni and you liked cheese and for some oddball reason you liked black olives. I threw the ingredients together with a can of spicy tomato sauce and some crumbled burger, baked it in a casserole dish, and voila! You loved it. When you asked me what it was, I made up the name kooky macaroni.”

  “After that I asked for it all the time.”

  “That you did. Now listen to me.” She pointed a finger at me. “You’re pale and exhausted, and I want you to go home and go to bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said with a tepid salute.

  I was beginning to feel better, at least emotionally. Talking about that agonizing day had been cathartic. I’d always blamed myself for Pebbles getting killed in the road. It never occurred to me that Dad as the adult should never have left me alone in the car.

  As for Aunt Tres
sa, I’d never realized that my fretting over her health and her safety had reached the point of overkill. Not that I’d ever stop worrying about her, but from now on I’d do it more surreptitiously.

  I pushed away my wine glass and glanced at her. Her expression was aglow with, what … dreams of a new love? “Hey Aunt Tress,” I said softly, “did you ever have your conversation with Marty?”

  Eyes sparkling, she grinned. “I did, and as usual he came through. He reminded me that I’d had the answer all along, that it’s always been inside me.” She splayed her hand over heart.

  After a long moment of silence, I glared at her. “Are you going to tell me what it was?”

  With a laugh she said, “Of course! When the song came on the radio, I knew it was Marty sending me a sign. All you need is love.”

  Oh, boy. Aunt Tressa had it bad.

  I rose and delivered my nearly full wine glass to the sink. My head felt as if someone had pumped it full of air and was using it for basketball practice.

  Bidding my aunt good night, I stumbled back to my apartment. Something about that valentine was still poking at my brain.

  It was going to drive me batty until I figured out what it was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  From the journal of Frederic Dwardene, Friday, January 12, 1951

  I haven’t seen Lillian since Monday!Why hasn’t she come into the bank? I thought by now I might have received a tiny note, thanking me for the china cat. But no, nothing …

  It was almost seven thirty when I remembered that the last solid food I’d eaten was the chef’s salad I’d barely touched early in the afternoon. Oddly, I still didn’t feel very hungry.

  After coughing through Wheel of Fortune—during which I alternated between shouting guesses at the television and rereading the valentine—I made myself a plate of graham crackers slathered with peanut butter. My kind of comfort food. But the first bite made me grimace. Something tasted off. Had my peanut butter dallied past its expiration date?

  Eeech. I didn’t want to know. I set aside the crackers and picked up the valentine again. Concentrate, I told myself.

  With weary eyes, I gave it another read-through. The saccharine sentiment hadn’t changed. It was the same sugary drivel.

  I read it again. And then once more.

  You’ve dwelt within my heart, dear love

  From that first and shining day

  Your eyes of blue and locks of gold

  Within my dreams did reign

  And so, dear sweet, to you I pledge

  My essence and my soul

  Now we shall dwell within this home

  Which shall be yours to hold

  This time something sparked inside my head. Like a tiny match struck over and over until the flame ignites. Something about the last line of the poem. No, the last two lines.

  Now we shall dwell within this HOME

  Which shall be yours to HOLD

  I read the two lines, over and over. What was it about those words that bothered me?

  But the spark was gone. Fizzled.

  Maybe after a solid night’s rest it would come to me. I reached for the envelope and slipped the valentine back inside.

  And then I saw the numbers.

  The numbers that someone, probably Lou, had written with a felt-tipped pen on the back of the envelope. Until now, I’d been ignoring them.

  1199-0540. Written exactly that way.

  I was back to my original question. Why had Lou wanted me to have the valentine?

  All at once, I saw those numbers the way I see them every day.

  Book and page numbers in the Registry of Deeds.

  My laptop was on the kitchen counter. Heart hammering, I skidded into the kitchen on stocking feet and dragged it over in front of me. “Come on, come on,” I muttered, booting it up.

  A decade must have elapsed before I was finally on the Internet. The site for the New Hampshire Registries of Deeds—nhdeeds.com—was at the top of my browser. Within seconds, I was in the grantor indices of the Rockingham County Registry.

  In the prompt for “Book” I entered 1199, and in the one for “Page” I entered 0540. I clicked View Document.

  After twenty or so seconds, a copy of a deed appeared. Handwritten, it was penned in the same elaborate script as the valentine.

  Know all men by these presents that I, Frederic Dwardene, an unremarried widower, for consideration paid, hereby grant to Dora Lillian Bilodeau, with quitclaim covenants, the following described property:

  My stomach clenched as the deed went on to describe the parcel of land that the mansion sat on. At the bottom, Frederic Dwardene had signed it, dating it February 2, 1951. His signature had been properly witnessed and notarized. The Registry’s date stamp at the bottom showed he’d recorded the deed the same day.

  Now we shall dwell within this home which shall be yours to hold …

  The words now made perfect sense. A mortgage banker by profession, Frederic would have been familiar with the term “holding title.”

  Lovestruck Frederic had conveyed his home to Lillian. If my guess was right, he’d enclosed the deed inside the envelope with the valentine.

  It was his Valentine’s Day gift to her. A gift that was never delivered.

  Nausea gripped me. Bile rose in my throat.

  For starters, I’d done the title search on the property and failed to find this deed. In my line of work that was a deadly omission—every title searcher’s living nightmare. How had I missed it?

  My hands shook as I brought up the indices for nineteen fifty-one. I entered the name DWARDENE. Since it wasn’t a common name, it was an easy one to search. Names like “Smith” and “Jones” were the bane of title searchers.

  But the only “Dwardene” document listed under the year nineteen fifty-one was a mortgage from Mason Dwardene to the Hazleton Savings Bank—a mortgage that encumbered the home Blake’s dad had grown up in.

  There were no entries under Frederic Dwardene, or even under F. Dwardene or Fred Dwardene.

  I checked some alternate spellings, though I knew I’d already done so when I searched the title. Names that sounded like Dwardene but could be spelled differently. Duardene. Doardene.

  Nothing.

  I went back to the beginning of the “D” names and scanned every name slowly.

  And there it was. A deed recorded in Book 1199, Page 0540. Indexed under the name Dawrdene, Frederic.

  Dawrdene.

  All this time, the deed had been indexed under the wrong spelling—two of the letters had been transposed. In Registry lingo it was a scrivener’s error. That’s why I hadn’t found it during my search.

  A chill crept over me.

  My fingers numb, I entered Lillian’s name in the indices, beginning with the year nineteen fifty-one and coming forward all the way to the present. Maybe she’d somehow learned about the deed and conveyed the property back to Frederic.

  But there was nothing.

  Lillian owned the property that Blake and Celeste were planning to sell in three days.

  That’s why Lou had left the cryptic message in Sam’s voice mail. I think there’s been a terrible mistake …

  My heart sank to my stomach like a dead weight. All this time, the mistake had been mine—not Sam’s. I’d failed to find the misindexed deed when I searched the title.

  While cleaning out the desk, Lou Marshall had found the deed.

  And so, apparently, had the killer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  From the journal of Frederic Dwardene, Saturday, January 13, 1951

  I’ve tried three times this past week to drive Lillian home from work, but she wasn’t at the bus stop at her usual time. I’m ter rified that she is avoiding me. Either that or she is gravely ill and on her deathbed. I have resolved to contact her mother …

  Fatigue instantly abandoned me. Adrenaline zinged through me like a live power line.

  Blake had obviously found out about the deed and killed Lou to keep
him quiet. The afternoon of the estate sale, Celeste had said Blake was cleaning out the basement. But at some point he must have gone upstairs to talk to Lou. Had Lou told Blake about the deed? Or had Blake simply wandered into Lou’s makeshift office when Lou was on the phone trying to reach Sam? Either way, Blake must have panicked, realizing Lou was about to blow everything. In which case, Blake and Celeste’s plans for their big move would be derailed, maybe permanently.

  Right now the more important question was: where was Lillian? Assuming she was still alive, where had Blake hidden her?

  And then—like the lightning bolt that struck Michael in The Godfather when he first saw Apollonia—it came to me.

  Blake’s cabin in Weare. The one he inherited from his dad. It was the perfect place to stash a hostage. But he couldn’t keep Lillian prisoner forever, could he? That scared me more than anything.

  Weare was in Hillsborough County. My fingers moved at warp speed as I went back to nhdeeds.com, this time logging onto the Hillsborough County Registry. Unlike Rockingham, whose online indices went back to the sixteen hundreds, Hillsborough’s ran from nineteen sixty-six to the present. If Albert Dwardene bought the cabin any time after nineteen sixty-five, I should be able to find his deed.

  Luck and the angels were with me. A deed to Albert Dwardene for land in Weare was recorded in nineteen seventy-nine. I clicked the link to view it and scanned the legal description. The property was on Deer Trail Road in Weare. Unfortunately, deeds don’t offer driving directions.

  But the town’s website might reveal a street address. Fingers flying, I did a quick search and pulled up Weare’s assessment records. It felt like an eon before the assessor’s card for Albert’s parcel came up, but it was probably only five or six seconds.

  And there was the street address: 29 Deer Trail Road.

  In the upper left corner of the card was a mini-photo of the cabin. I enlarged it. A log cabin with a pitched roof came into view. Two windows flanked the front door. They looked fairly low to the ground, maybe four feet at the most.

  I did a fast MapQuest search and printed out directions. On a good day, the drive was about forty minutes from Hazleton. But in the winter …