by Molly Macrae
“We don’t jump to conclusions,” I said. “We—”
“We call it a night,” said Thea. She was looking at Ernestine, concern clear on her face. “We look at this all again tomorrow with fresh eyes and fresh minds.” When she turned her gaze on us, Ardis and I nodded.
• • •
Thea offered me a ride home. I told her I needed the walk. She glared at her shoes, then slipped her feet back into them and gathered her jacket, her silk scarf, and Ernestine. I watched them go, wondering if between helping in the shop and our evening debriefing, we’d asked too much of Ernestine for one day. When I started to help with the dishes, Ardis shooed me toward the door, too.
“You go on home, hon. Get a good night’s sleep. We’re going to need your critical thinking skills at their best.”
I told her I’d call if I heard that we could reopen the shop. “And if we can’t open, we should probably meet.”
“There’s no probably about it. Give me time for my Sunday morning slug-a-bed fest and then I’m all yours. When and where?”
Her question bumped up against something in my head. When and where? How could someone target Reva Louise? How did anyone know when and where she was going to be?
“Tell you what,” Ardis said. “I’ll call you when I’m up and I can be sure you’re properly caffeinated. We’ll figure out the when and where of it then, and I’ll call the others to let them know. I might as well give Joe a buzz, too, although I expect he’ll have an unbreakable date with some fish.”
Lured.
“Hon?” Ardis put her hand on my shoulder and I looked up into her kind face.
“Someone lured her there,” I said. “To that spot. At that time. It couldn’t have been done any other way. Not with any certainty.”
“That was the flaw in the targeting theory,” Ardis said. “I knew you’d catch it, but I didn’t want to stymie your cognitive processes by dwelling on it. The targeting theory only works if someone was truly evil.”
“Someone spun a web and lured Reva Louise in. You’re right. Truly evil.”
“Amen.”
• • •
I took the long way home, with a three-block zigzag out of my way to stop at the Weaver’s Cat. On other evenings, I’d thought of the nighttime streets in Blue Plum as cozier than dark streets back in Springfield, Illinois. The streetlights were few and far between in Blue Plum, but they gave enough mellow light to keep me from tripping on uneven sidewalks. Chirping crickets and occasional voices and laughter from a front porch usually softened any worries I carried around with me. But that night I skirted the park behind the courthouse and I couldn’t make myself walk down the service alley behind the Weaver’s Cat to look in the back door. I passed by the mouth of the alley and then started to run. I was out of breath by the time I dashed around the corner and climbed the steps to the front porch.
As I cupped my hands to one of the front windows, trying to see into the darkened shop, a familiar trickle of cold made me shiver.
“I’ve been thinking it over,” Geneva said. She appeared beside me, her right arm across my shoulders, her left hand cupped to the window, like mine, the better to peer inside. “I believe Reva Louise knew she was going to die. What are we looking at in there?”
“I was looking for you.” I slipped out of her embrace and crossed the porch to sit on the steps. She drifted over and sat on the top step facing me, her back against the porch post, her chin on her drawn-up knees.
“Should we be seen speaking to each other on Main Street on a Saturday night?” she asked. “Whatever will the neighbors say? Or the lamplighter?”
I dug my phone out of my purse and put it to my ear. Before speaking, I still looked to see if anyone else was out walking and might overhear. A casual conversation on a cell phone in public was one thing. Discussing murder out in the open, even quietly, made me nervous. “Why do you think she knew she was going to die?”
“She waved.”
“I don’t understand.”
“At me. She waved at me. I’m sure there must be such a thing as a fact book of ghosts available somewhere. Maybe you can find one at the library. I never cared for reading about that kind of supernatural hogwash myself, but someone has probably done a study. Something authoritative would be best.”
“Why do I want to read this hogwash?”
“I’m not sure, but I think you’ll find that in the few moments before a person dies, she or he can see spirits. Ghosts. That’s interesting, don’t you think? Almost romantic.”
“You told me that people who drink gin sometimes see ghosts.”
“Well, obviously there’s more than one way to see a ghost.”
“I’ve been seeing you for several months. I don’t drink gin and I haven’t had so much as a sniffle.”
Geneva shrugged. “Everyone knows you’re different.”
Because I was sitting on the front steps of a yarn shop that only I knew was haunted, I wasn’t in a position to argue with her about being different. “Tell me what happened. What you saw when you think she waved at you.”
“When she did wave at me. There was a terrible noise outside. People yelling and shooting. Poor Argyle had to hide under the desk. It broke my heart not to be able to cuddle and comfort him. I looked out the window in the study, but all I saw was people running around the corner, so I went to that nasty, dusty window in the gable end. People were in the street and more people, including children, lined the street, and a small, terrified animal—it might have been a puppy, but I couldn’t be sure—was trying to push its way into a tent. Was that your tent?”
“Yes. That was a piglet. You were watching the play I told you about.”
“It wasn’t like any play I’ve ever seen. It was very loud with some people brandishing rifles and other people laughing. It was very confusing. And then most of the people moved off down the street and along came Reva Louise. She stood behind your tent and looked around. She moved a few steps to her left. She looked up and she waved at me. And then she opened her mouth like this.” Geneva’s mouth made a circle and her empty eyes were wide and round. “Then she fell. Dead.”
“You were watching when she fell?” I tried to keep my voice steady and low, tried not to send vibes of shock or horror. “Are you okay?” She seemed okay and she’d seemed her usual self when she floated down out of the window and joined Ardis and me beside the body. But she’d started acting oddly when we sat in the squad car and later in the study. I knew that sometime in her past—in her life—she’d been traumatized by the violent deaths of a young couple named Mattie and Sam. That was the “mysterious antique double murder” Clod Dunbar had razzed me about the night he horned in on my possible date with his brother. It was a terrible memory that Geneva had asked me not to remind her of. But seeing Reva Louise shot right in front of her . . .
“Do you want to talk about what happened this afternoon?” I asked.
“I just did. Weren’t you listening?”
“I was. I just wondered if you needed to—” She really didn’t seem upset, and something else suddenly occurred to me. “Say, Geneva, when Reva Louise passed over—”
“Over what?”
“I mean when she, um, died, did she . . . is she . . . did she become—”
“A ghost? No. She is not a ghost.”
That was more of a relief to hear than I expected. Talk about speaking ill of the dead, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like Reva Louise any better dead than alive. “I know I’ve asked you this before, but why do you think she isn’t a ghost and you are? How does that happen?”
“And I know I have answered you before and the answer has not changed. I might be dead, but that doesn’t make me an expert.”
“Okay, well, I want you to think about something. That gable window you were looking out of is so dusty that you couldn’t tell whether the actors were chasing a piglet or a puppy, right? So maybe you couldn’t tell who Reva Louise was looking at when she waved. Do you think it’
s possible she was waving to someone in a window below you? Someone in the bathroom window?”
“Don’t you like my theory that she knew she was going to die?”
“I do like it, but I want to add a twist to it. What if someone lured Reva Louise to stand right there in that spot? What if she knew that person, saw that person in the bathroom window, and waved? To that person. And that’s the person who shot her. What do you think of that theory?”
“I like the inescapable tragedy of mine more,” she said, “but I can see where yours has a certain drama running through it. It also lets me off the hook.”
“What hook?”
“You don’t suppose she’d been drinking gin, do you?”
“No idea. Geneva, what hook are you talking about?”
“The hook of inescapable and tragically eternal responsibility.” She actually put the back of her hand to her forehead and billowed with each lovingly added adjective and adverb. I waited without saying anything until she looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
“Is that why you acted skittish when the deputies came up to the study with me? Why did you think they’d arrest you over that?” The poor thing. No wonder she acted like a dank and dismal dishrag so much of the time. She carried an awful load around with her. Not that she didn’t seem to enjoy it some of the time. “Did you have a lot of responsibilities back when, when you were alive?” I asked.
“You stutter over saying that dead-and-alive thing much less than you used to,” she said. “It’s a nice improvement.”
“Thank you. Will you answer my question?”
“Perhaps I led a carefree and pampered life and that’s why I am so quick to chain myself to the yoke of responsibility now. Remember when I thought I was responsible for Em’s ghastly death?”
I did remember. And neither then nor now did she look like the ghost of a woman without a care in the world. Then she’d looked more like a puddle of eternal sorrows. I didn’t tell her that, though. She’d come a long way since then. A long, melodramatic way, but apparently we’d both improved.
“Did you go downstairs this afternoon?”
“Oh my gosh.” She sat up straight, dropping her knees and slapping her thighs soundlessly with her hands. “Would I have seen the villain?”
“You might have.” I leaned toward her, catching her excitement, hoping she had seen someone.
She threw her hands in the air. “What a shame, then, because I didn’t go downstairs at all.”
We both sighed. I took the phone from my ear and checked the time, then let it drop in my lap. It was going on ten and time to be going home. I had notes to make, questions to pull out of my head and get into my laptop. Or my new notebook. I didn’t stir.
“Would it help if I told you who came upstairs this afternoon?”Geneva asked.
“Upstairs where? To the study? John or Ernestine might have done that, but was there someone else?”
“Oopsy.”
“What do you mean, ‘oopsy’? Who did you see?”
She pointed to the phone in my lap, then mimed putting it to her ear. “Oopsy,” she said again. “Too late.”
“Nice evening,” another voice said.
Chapter 16
J. Scott Prescott must have cut across the street. He stepped up on the sidewalk, still wearing the frock coat he’d worn for the skit. Also wearing an assessing kind of look on his clean-cut Boy Scout face. He crossed his arms, head tipped to one side. Was he taking my measure? Wondering just how off-the-wall this woman talking to thin air was? But how much could he have heard? Except that, in my excitement to hear who’d been sneaking in my attic, I hadn’t exactly been whispering.
“Ah.” He snapped his fingers. “I get it. You can’t fool a playwright. You were rehearsing something. Rehearsing what, I can’t imagine, but you were good. You had me believing that old porch post there was going to answer you.” He grinned and put his hand on the railing.
Geneva made a rude noise but stayed where she was with her back to the post. I palmed my phone and stood, moving up the steps so I was on the porch looking down at him. J. Scott’s grin faded.
“I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk this afternoon, after what happened,” he said. “That was a truly terrible and completely avoidable accident. I hope you can believe me when I say I did not go against your wishes. None of my actors was cleared to enter your business during the play. I am as profoundly shocked as anyone that such a mistake was made. And live ammunition.” He shook his head. “Unbelievably careless and absolutely stupid. I spent most of the afternoon with the sheriff and his deputies, working with them, going over the logistics and the choreography, both of which I’d thought were impeccable. As I told them, repeatedly, I am at a loss to understand how it happened. Miscommunication? I don’t know. I gave instructions and, for whatever reason, someone thought he knew better.” He shook his head again, looking at the ground. “As I say, I don’t know. I believe I’m still in shock. Or maybe I’m suffering from utter exhaustion.”
“Has he noticed he is the only one talking?” Geneva said out of the side of her mouth.
“Seems unlikely.” Oopsy.
“I beg your pardon?” J. Scott looked up.
“Either one of them seems likely,” I said. “Probably both. Exhaustion and shock.”
He and I both nodded at that wisdom. Geneva joined us for a few nods and then made another rude noise. I coughed to cover a laugh. She must have known a ten-year-old boy at some point and studied the finer points of his sense of humor. Or maybe she’d absorbed the nuances from her eternity of television watching.
J. Scott lifted his chin toward the front door with its crime scene tape. “Do you have insurance to cover loss of revenue in a situation like this?”
“Why? Do you have a card for selling insurance, too?” Judging from the reaction of his eyebrows, he didn’t get my joke. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“After today’s tragedy, loss of revenue is something else we have in common. Besides our love for old buildings, I mean. Do you remember that I told you I’d found a buyer for the mercantile across from the courthouse? Sad to say, but that deal might have died with Ms. Snapp.”
That was interesting and that would be why Reva Louise had his card. But was the deal iffy because someone died or because Reva Louise died? While I was wondering whether or not to ask him about that, he skipped ahead of me.
“I hope you didn’t mention the deal to anyone.”
My mind ignored his question and thought of another interesting one of its own. Why was it that the mercantile deal only might have died?
Either my pondering lasted too long for his comfort or my extremely readable face was giving him an answer he thought he could interpret. He cocked his head to one side. “Did you mention it to someone?”
I brought my face and my lips into sync and said, “No. But why is the deal a secret?”
“You might say I’m superstitious. It must be the playwright in me.”
“Are playwrights superstitious, too? I thought it was the actors.”
He struck a pose, arms open, as though I might have missed his frock coat and neck handkerchief.
“Oh yeah. I guess I hadn’t realized you were in the skit as well as directing it. You’ve got the superstition thing covered, then.”
He looked disappointed. Had he expected a different reaction? Applause? I wasn’t going to go that far, but the least I could do was dredge up some sympathy.
“I’m sorry your skit ended so badly today.”
“The play,” he said, emphasizing my lapse in calling it a skit. “And it actually ended well. The last scene took place in the park behind the courthouse exactly as intended. The finale appeared chaotic to the audience, but it came off without a hitch. I showed the script to the sheriff so he could see that we left almost nothing to chance except the individual actors’ use of the Piglet War yell. And there was plenty of spirited yelling coming from the audience as well. The piglet himsel
f came through unscathed. And all of that was taking place at about the same time the unscripted addition to the performance—the tragic death of Ms. Snapp—occurred.”
“Or maybe after she died. I don’t think she was shot too long after the action moved on from Depot Street.”
He flicked a hand, indicating what? Agreement? Uncertainty? A sense of being overwhelmed by the chaos that had crashed his masterpiece? I was feeling unkind but didn’t ask him that question.
“Were you able to help the sheriff figure anything out?” I asked instead. “You gave him a list of all the actors?”
“I gave them all the information I could,” he said.
That didn’t really answer my question, so I asked another. “Any idea how easy it’ll be to figure out who used the live rounds? Will they be able talk to all the actors?”
“The sheriff gave me almost no information back, so I’m afraid we’re left wondering. And looking over our shoulders.” He loosened his neck handkerchief. “That I’m still wearing all this shows what kind of day it turned into.” He pulled the handkerchief off and shrugged out of the long black coat. His shirt and trousers were part of the costume and looked to be reasonably accurate reproductions. His shoes, too, from the little I could see of them. “The day was too hot for linsey-woolsey,” he said, “but do you know, after a point that didn’t even register, because the rest of the day became too terrible.” He slung the coat of his shoulder. “And now I will bid you good night. Again, I’m sorry for the trouble this has brought down on you and your business.” He bowed and walked away.
I expected Geneva to clap at his performance, because that’s exactly what it seemed to be. A backside-covering performance of grand proportions, complete with overblown language. It had at least earned another, even louder, rude noise from Geneva, but she didn’t clap or blow raspberries. When I looked at her, she hooked a thumb at his retreating back and said, “He crept into the study today. Uninvited and unannounced.”
“What?”
I looked after him and saw him hesitate, head tipped as though listening. Maybe he’d caught my outburst. Then he crossed the street and disappeared around the corner. But the nerve of him, standing there and telling me he was in shock and suffering from utter exhaustion. Suffering from utter gall was more like it. For the briefest nanosecond I considered running after him and wrapping his handkerchief back around his neck—tight—until he told me what he’d been up to. But I was glad when my brain stepped in and kept my feet where they were. Running after a snoop in the dark was stupid.