by Jean Flowers
“Glad you asked. Say you need eight feet of books bound in blue, for example; they’ll put them together for you.”
“That seems strange. Why would anyone buy books by color, or order them by length?”
“Lots of reasons. It could be for a theater set. Or some people like to use books for decoration and they want colors complementary to their living room. Or they want a certain theme in their summer rental. Or they’re selling their house and they need to stage it. Or—”
“Okay, I get it.” I ran my hand over the book at my side. The dust jacket pictured a large sea vessel, its front end in the water, its back end on fire. The image of red and yellow flames was raised from the glossy paper, an approximation to three dimensions and a promise of action to come. This cover hadn’t been designed for any particular décor. “I can’t imagine buying books for any reason other than to read, no matter what the cover looks like,” I said.
He laughed. “That’s why you’re not in my business. I bought a couple of leather-bound sets, one in dark green and one in brown with gold trim. I have no idea what’s inside.”
“And you think someone will buy them?”
“Uh-huh. Especially if I display only one set at a time. And if you don’t understand why I’ll put out only one at a time, you have a lot to learn about the games we play in this business.”
“Not my first clue. And speaking of business issues . . .”
I told Quinn about my meeting with Cliff, and the various town controversies as I understood them. I did my best to play down the part where Cliff had almost hooked me into playing detective or, at least, security guard.
Quinn let out a long breath and I knew I’d said too much. “Do I need to come home and make sure that doesn’t happen?”
“No, no.”
“As if I could stop you. Just—”
“I know. I’ll be careful.”
When we hung up, I realized that I’d unintentionally begun leaning toward a decision. One more plea from Cliff, or one tiny clue that might surface, and I’d end up helping him look into his wife’s murder. The best I could hope for was that Cliff would forget he’d ever asked that favor.
As if I needed a prod in the opposite direction, my next call was from Chief of Police Sunni Smargon.
“Did you and Cliff have a good visit?”
“Uh, yes. He’s having a tough time with Daisy’s death, as to be expected.” Clinical enough, I hoped.
“I noticed you extended the visit to your place.”
I should have known that Sunni would have seen Cliff’s car outside my house. She saw everything. She probably knew he’d stopped to pick up dinner, and what kinds of sides were included.
“Excuse me? Is this the NSA or CIA calling?” I asked. Humor was always worth a shot.
“Don’t be cute. And don’t tell me the incompetence of the North Ashcot PD didn’t come up in your conversation.”
“He needed consoling.”
“And second-guessing us, I’ll bet.”
“Isn’t it only natural that he’d be questioning everything and wondering how it happened that his wife was murdered? He hasn’t said so directly, but I think he feels guilty that he wasn’t home to protect her. He’s a guard, after all. In the protection business.” I left out “like you.”
“He was at your house a long time.”
“You really are the NSA.” Still keeping a smile in my voice. “I suppose you won’t believe that we talked about the parade next weekend and whether we’d wear costumes.”
She shook her head. “All of a sudden you’re both big fans of General Knox and his ox?”
Finally, a chuckle, at the rhyme. “Did you know that Knox and the load of cannons crossed the state line from New York into Massachusetts at Alford, and probably sledded right through what is now North Ashcot?”
“Fascinating,” Sunni said. “Here’s another thought. Maybe what happened tonight was that the widower Harmon has made a complete and swift recovery, and you’ve dumped the antiques dealer for the local security guard.”
“You got it,” I said. “Cliff and I are eloping at midnight. In fact, maybe you can help. Aren’t you legally certified to perform a marriage ceremony?”
“Touché. Do you stay up thinking of ways to annoy me?”
“Are you still patrolling around town?”
“Yes, and I could use some coffee.”
“How about some chicken and mashed potatoes?”
* * *
It was worth my getting out of bed to be able to give some comfort to my hardworking friend. Either Sunni was too tired to issue her usual warnings about my snooping (she called it “obstructing”) or she was too hungry to care. After polishing off the chicken dinner in record time, she moved to the living room and leaned back in one of my glide rockers, feet up on the matching ottoman.
“I may be getting too old for this job,” she said.
“What is it? Only another twenty-five years to retirement?”
She gave her forehead a slap. “Thanks for the reminder. The worst part is that I have to look at everyone as a suspect and every situation as a potential for crime. People I deal with every day. Last week, I walk into Andy’s Dry Cleaners and I find myself looking more closely at the equipment. That hot, heavy press would make an effective weapon, I’m thinking. Poor Andy. He must have thought I was nuts looking at him suspiciously. And I wasn’t even working a homicide at the time.”
Sunni didn’t usually share such feelings with me. I decided to move in while she was in a vulnerable position, having sought solace in my home, ingested my food, and stretched out on my furniture. Bad Cassie.
“Did Barry offer anything useful? Like a clue as to who might have been fighting with Daisy?”
“No hair or fibers, if that’s what you mean. Who knows what the wind and rain that day might have washed away? He found a trace of a substance that at first he thought was blood, but of course most of it would have been washed away. Turned out not to be blood anyway. Possibly ink. How about that?”
“That’s something, though. Where was the ink?”
“On Daisy’s wrist, I believe.”
“Can they tell what it’s from? Like a marker or a regular ballpoint? Or would that even matter? Maybe it could be traced to a particular user, like a specific shop owner, something like that?”
Sunni shook her head, shrugged in a helpless gesture. “On TV maybe, before the next commercial. The only clear conclusion of our ME’s exam is that Daisy struck or was struck by a hard object, like a rock, and that she put up quite a fight.”
I shut my eyes against the image of bruises on Daisy’s small body. From the look on Sunni’s face, I thought she might be having the same reaction. I left the room and took a few minutes in the kitchen, refilling our mugs.
“It must be awful when you don’t have much to start with,” I said.
Sunni popped up in the seat. “Hey, enough.”
Good intentions but bad judgment on my part. I gave Sunni an innocent look and held up my hands in surrender.
“What did you put in that coffee?” she asked.
“Truth serum,” I said, getting a welcome laugh from her and relieving the tension.
She lumbered off the chair, looking only slightly better than when she had arrived. “I’d better get going.”
“I can drive you home if you like,” I offered. “And pick you up in the morning. No problem.” Obliging Cassie.
“I’m fine. Thanks anyway.”
Sunni departed on her own, assuring me she’d drunk enough coffee to keep her awake for the few miles to her house, and leaving me with nothing but a last-minute mention of a spot of red ink to think about.
6
To an outsider, it might have seemed like a normal Thursday morning at the post office, with customers lined up, glad to be out o
f the summer humidity, exchanging complaints (“The line isn’t moving fast enough”; “The grocery store is out of lemon-flavored sparkling water”) and pleasantries (“It’s much cooler this week after the storm”; “Fall TV shows will be starting soon”).
But my guess was that, like me, most of the residents felt a pall over the town, a heavy cloud bearing the weight of the drastic escalation of bad news that had shaken us, from a possible casualty of the small storm, to the accidental death of a member of the community, to the declared murder verdict in the case of Daisy Harmon. Aunt Tess always said you could smell a storm, even after it had passed, and I thought the observation was never more true than now.
I suspected it wasn’t just Sunni who looked at everyone with suspicion today. It was hard to trust any but our closest friends. I recognized a few people from South Ashcot who often came by when their post office lobby was even more crowded than ours. My immediate reaction when I saw the interlopers: Had Sunni thought of looking for motives among those nonresidents of North Ashcot? Maybe one of them was an unsatisfied fabric shop customer. Or someone who was part of an old feud that had resurfaced across town borders?
I had enough to do, with more than the usual number of money orders today and a couple of people who needed help wrapping unwieldy packages, but in between, my mind went to Daisy’s unsolved murder. I longed to know how the investigation was proceeding. I was dismayed that my status as best friend of the chief of police gave me no insight into the progress, if any, she and her staff were making, or what they were focusing on.
Now and then I replayed sayings from Daisy in my head. One was embroidered on a T-shirt she had made up for each new member of the group: QUILTERS ARE PIECEMAKERS. Another was a sign above the door to the back room of her shop: BEFORE ANTIDEPRESSANTS THERE WAS QUILTING. And her most useful: WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU SCRAPS, MAKE A QUILT. It was hard to reconcile her playful outlook with the way she had died.
Cliff had texted me sometime during the night saying he’d like to come by with lunch “to firm up some plans.” I imagined his list might include “break into the PD and copy police case notes” and “bring in all of Daisy’s friends, acquaintances, and customers and line them up for questioning.” Short of those tasks, I couldn’t see what two regular citizens could accomplish. But I felt I owed Cliff a hearing, and when I was free enough to text back, I wrote sure.
I’d cleared the lobby line by ten minutes before noon, giving me a little time to look more carefully at the pile of questionable pieces that had been delivered this morning. Stuffing the post office boxes, my second duty after raising the flag every day, usually moved quickly. I inserted mail with correct addresses and tended to the problem pieces later, as time allowed. Generally, I could make up for mislabeled mail from memory. I knew that the Olsons rented box 457 and not 754, for example, and that the Carrolls lived in South Ashcot, not North Ashcot. But there were times when I had to do a little research before being able to take care of an incorrect label. I never liked writing RETURN TO SENDER unless I’d exhausted all other options.
This morning, I’d left a postcard from Quinn on top of the stack. I read the wish you were here message, then looked again at the beautiful photo. On the front was a shot of the Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester, a center of the fishing industry, north of Boston on Cape Ann. The vista made me wistful not only for my boyfriend, but for the days I’d spent walking the beaches along the Atlantic Ocean.
I tucked the card in my desk drawer and worked my way down the pile of misfits. A letter addressed to David Rafferty, a name I didn’t recognize at first, had me stumped until I remembered that he was the Raleys’ nephew from Chicago, spending the month of August with them and their tiny animals. I placed the envelope in their box.
Another anomaly was an envelope addressed to a former box holder who’d moved. I checked my register, added the forwarding address, and dropped the item in the bag for pickup tomorrow. If only every problem could be solved so simply.
The last letter was addressed to “Postmaster.” I slit the plain white envelope open and read the handwritten note. I gulped and read it again, bringing on a shiver.
Do your job or go home.
My name wasn’t on it, I reasoned, once my breath returned to normal. It wasn’t a personal message. It could be meant for any postmaster, maybe Ben—though after a year on the job, I had to admit it probably wasn’t for my predecessor, and the “go home” part was suspiciously pointed. The most positive spin I could put on it was that an ill-humored customer was unhappy with my job performance and unwilling to face me directly with his or her issue.
I tried to think of an altercation I’d had; nothing came to mind that would provoke this response. I’d opened the office a half hour late once this summer when a plumbing problem at home kept me longer than I’d expected. Ben had been away on vacation and I’d asked a neighbor on Main Street, two houses down, to post a sign on the post office door for me. She hadn’t fastened it securely and the paper blew away. I’d returned to a small klatch of annoyed customers.
Was this note from one of them? Or from the woman whose five-hundred-dollar money order I wasn’t able to cash until the end of the retail day? Or the man who was unhappy that I was out of medium-sized complimentary Priority Mail boxes? I guess it had been a less than perfect summer at the North Ashcot Post Office after all.
I hoped one of those complainers was responsible for the note in my hand. Anything more sinister would be hard to grasp.
Letters of complaint were not something new to me. There was no limit to the number of people who might have a gripe. The grievance could be about poor service, too few hours of operation, a package that arrived damaged. I’d done my best to make up for any inadequacies, perceived or otherwise, over the course of my fifteen-year career with the postal service in various parts of Massachusetts. I remembered a time when I was working in Boston—a spider found its way to the top of my counter, prompting a woman to go screaming from the lobby and later to put her angry thoughts in writing. I wasn’t proud of the good laugh Linda and I had at the woman’s expense. Later, of course.
I inspected the current letter again, this time more calmly. It wasn’t really ominous, I decided. Probably someone whose birthday card was lost in the mail for a while, through no fault of mine; or someone with a package I hadn’t taped securely enough, definitely a fault of my own.
I put the letter in a “Miscellaneous” file, just in time to greet Cliff as he walked through the front doors carrying a leather-flap briefcase.
* * *
The chief of police was the only exception I made to the NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS rule posted behind the retail counter. Cliff didn’t measure up to that standard, so I took advantage of the adjoining community room where a group of volunteers was setting up for an evening meeting. With their permission, Cliff and I took our lunches to a table at the back, promising to leave it as clean as we’d found it.
I’d brought my usual peanut butter sandwich, but succumbed to an aromatic offering from Cliff, who’d stopped at a new seafood restaurant in South Ashcot. If he was trying to woo me with food, he was on the right track with an order of shrimp scampi.
Cliff showed no signs of being rested. Last evening’s dark rings seemed more prominent, as did the lines around his mouth. I recognized the same polo shirt he’d worn yesterday and wondered if he’d even tried to rest. “Did you get any sleep?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I’ve got a lot to do. The police might release Daisy any minute and I’ll be flying down to Miami where her parents are.”
I remembered that Daisy’s parents had started out as “snowbirds,” the term we used to describe longtime residents of New England who spent the winter months in Florida as soon as they retired. Every year, with the first snow and the search for ice scrapers, I thought it was an idea worth considering, but never acted on it. Eventually, like other couples, Daisy’s mom and
dad sold their New Hampshire home and moved to Florida permanently.
Cliff pulled a folder from his briefcase. He had two copies of everything in the folder. One by one, he handed me sheets of paper, giving me a quick explanation for each. A list of friends (“Not suspects, but they may have some useful insights”). A list of customers who had a complaint in the last six months (“Nothing big, but you never know”). Assorted lists of tasks, possible motives for wanting Daisy out of someone’s life, and photos of the backyard where Daisy had met her killer.
The last items he pulled out of his briefcase were copies of pages that seemed to be from a ledger.
“Here’s what I have so far on the financial side,” he said.
“I’m pretty hopeless when it comes to money matters,” I said, truthfully. I’d rejoiced when I learned that it was no longer necessary for me to slave over balancing my checkbook every month as long as I kept up online, and even the post office accounting chores were more and more centralized and streamlined every year, thanks to the Internet.
“I’m not that great, either,” Cliff said. “But we have to follow the money trail, as they say. Daisy handled the money herself, with Jules, our accountant, of course, but she talked about it a lot. In fact, she did her best to share the information with me. Now I wish I’d listened more.”
Cliff reached for his container of shrimp, but only to push it farther from his spread-out papers. I hadn’t had much to eat since a quick lunch yesterday, but I hated to be the first to do something as mundane as eat during this highly emotional meeting. Part of me hoped my stomach growls would reach Cliff’s ear, and maybe serve as a reminder to him.
No such luck. He stayed on track, sips from his bottle of water his only gesture to nutrition.
“I’ve asked Jules for whatever else he has, and he’s going to help me interpret everything. I’m hoping you’ll be at that meeting.”
“As I say—”