Did You Declare the Corpse?

by Patricia Sprinkle

Sergeant Murray arrived before seven to talk to me. We sat in the dining room while I told him I’d remembered hearing Jim quarreling with Norwood Hardin the previous evening, up the brae. “But that’s probably pointless now,” I concluded. “If Mr. Hardin himself has turned up in the other coffin, it’s unlikely he killed Jim.”

  “Hphmm.” That’s the closest I can get to what he said, but it indicated that the bobby was first cousin to a clam. I figured we were done and I’d wasted his time.

  He settled back and fixed me with a thoughtful stare. “Tell me aboot the quarrel.”

  I described as best I could what they’d said and how Norwood Hardin knocked Jim down. “Butted him, I think. I didn’t see it happen, but that’s what Jim told the laird’s wife he did.”

  The sound of a violin, low and mournful, filtered through the dining-room door. For a startled instant I thought Jim had returned to play his own lament, but then realized it must be Sherry, honoring him in the way she knew best.

  “The laird’s wife was there?” The bobby’s voice had a peculiar inflection.

  “Yes, she came about the time Norwood knocked Jim down.” I described how she had intervened and as much as I could remember about what everybody had said afterwards.

  The bobby turned his cap around and around in his hand, much like our sheriff back home does when he’s thinking. “The laird mentioned that he and Mr. Gordon were discussing business, but his wife did not mention knowing Mr. Gordon before. Ye’re sure she did?”

  “Oh, yes. She mentioned it last evening, Jim’s wife mentioned it at breakfast, and the laird himself told me later in the cemetery that his wife and Jim were friends back in Georgia.”

  “I will check on that, then.” He made a note. “When the men quarreled, you think it was because Mr. Hardin felt he deserved more—ah—”

  “Money. Yes. Apparently his part of the business deal was to ‘persuade’ the laird—that’s what he told his sister, anyway. She claimed that he persuaded her and she persuaded her husband. Jim was going to pay Norwood for setting up the deal, but Norwood wanted to be a partner. That’s what the quarrel was about, as I understood it.”

  He stood. “I’ll speak to the laird and his wife aboot this again, but it’s all very puzzling. From what you say, Mr. Gordon may have had a remote reason for killing Mr. Hardin, and Mr. Hardin may have had what he deemed a good reason for killing Mr. Gordon. The question is, who might have had reason to kill them both?”

  “You think it was the same person?”

  “We dinnae ken. It wasnae the same method, and the only prints on the coffins are Ian’s and, oddly, Mr. Hardin’s on the one he was found in. He seems to have opened the lid.”

  “Do you know if he was killed there or moved?”

  “Oh, he was killed there, right enough. Stabbed as he bent over the coffin, then bundled inside.” He settled his hat on his head and changed the subject. “Has Mrs. Gordon returned?”

  “None of us have seen her since breakfast.”

  “We havenae located her yet, either. It would help if we had a picture. Her description would fit so many people.”

  “Not at all. Brandi is drop-dead gorgeous. But wait! I have a snapshot I developed in Inverness.” I ran upstairs and fetched the picture of Jim and Brandi standing beside the bus in Glasgow. “So Norwood Hardin was stabbed?” I asked as I handed him the picture.

  “Aye, with a short sword, the kind we call a sgian dubh. It doesn’t belong to any of our local pipers, nor did it come from any of our local shops. We’re checking to see where it could have come from.”

  I felt very cold. “Can you describe it?”

  “Aye. It’s about this long”—he held his hands apart—“and has a particularly fine cairngorm worked into the hilt. A bonnie piece.”

  My first impulse was to say nothing until I could speak to Kenny. But I had obeyed a similar hunch that morning, and look what happened. “One of our group is a piper and has a sgian dubh with a cairngorm in the hilt. But he hasn’t been here all day, either. That’s his wife playing the violin.”

  “Would you ask her to step across here, please?”

  I found Sherry playing with no light but the lounge fire. “The police would like to speak with you,” I told her.

  She jumped and looked around like she was searching for another door than the one I was standing in. “Why?”

  “He wants to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “I haven’t done anything!”

  “Then you’ve nothing to fear, have you?” I held the door for her. She set down her fiddle and stood with a swishing of her long skirt. The way she walked across the hall, head up and chin at a slight angle, reminded me of a film I’d seen of Mary, Queen of Scots going to be beheaded.

  When I ushered her into the dining room, the sergeant handed me a piece of paper. “Just jot down your address in America, please. Then that will be all.”

  I lingered in the hall, reading some business cards in a basket on the hall table. In a very short time Sherry was back, heading up the stairs. “He wants to see Kenny’s sgian dubh.” She sounded worried. No wonder. She came back down with a blank expression. “It’s not there. Nor is his kilt. He must be wearing them, wherever he is.”

  The business cards had given me an idea. After the bobby left, I went to the kitchen, where Eileen was finishing the dishes. “Could I use your computer for a few minutes?”

  I sounded like one of those people who can’t be away from e-mail for two weeks without going crazy, but she led me to her private room without a word and turned on the computer.

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “You go on back to what you were doing.” As soon as the door closed behind her, I went online and searched for “Norwood Hardin.”

  By now I have done so much Internet research on folks whom I’ve suspected of various crimes that I subscribe to a number of news sources. Normally I am astonished at how much the Internet knows about us all. This time I was astonished at how little it knew. I found only two mentions of Norwood in the past five years. One was an article in Georgia Trends, discussing the growth of Albany businesses during the past thirty years. It mentioned Jim’s former company, among others, and showed a handsome picture of Jim in golf gear about to tee off with a partner identified as “Norwood Hardin, former CFO of Hardin and Gray Investment Firm.”

  Norwood received more press in a feature article a statewide paper had done one June on “Marriages She Should Never Have Made.” Along with two stories of wives murdered by their husbands, it told of Marilyn Gray’s marriage seventeen years before to her husband’s partner, Norwood, six months after her husband died in jail for investment fraud, and how Marilyn herself had slit her wrists less than two years later. The article was careful to say that Norwood himself was at a community-theater rehearsal the evening she died, and foul play was not suspected, but it clearly implied Marilyn had a good reason for what she did. The article was accompanied by their wedding picture: a smiling bride and groom accompanied by a sullen, unhappy teenager with long blonde hair, identified as “her daughter, Jocelyn Gray, maid of honor.” Apparently Jocelyn didn’t consider it much of an honor.

  Other than that, Norwood had not achieved Internet fame.

  I typed in “Gilroy’s Highland Tours.” I found a number of tours through the Highlands, the fine shiny buses that had come to the ceilidh and a shot of Ginger Beard helping a stout woman aboard his bus. I saw pictures of Gilroy hotel lobbies and Gilroy tearooms we had visited, advertising, “Gilroy’s package tours provide the finest accommodations, the last word in comfort.” I did not see Watty and his decrepit old bus. I did not find tours that offered discounts to folks who enticed others to come. Prices for a few tours were equivalent to what Laura and I had paid for our tour. Most were higher. And all tours said they required a minimum of twenty-five persons or money would be refunded.

  Before I shut down, on a whim I ran a search on Jim Gordon and printed out three articles where he, his plain littl
e wife, and their tall plain daughter, Wendy, were shown at social events with other shining lights of Albany society. In one, taken when Wendy was about fifteen, she stood beside a lovely contemporary I didn’t recognize until I read the caption: “with Jocelyn Gray. ”

  I was scrolling down to the next article when the phone rang. Eileen stuck her head in the door. “There’s a call for you.”

  It was Sergeant Murray, and apparently great minds ran in the same direction. “I see on the Internet that you’ve had some experience in working with law-enforcement agencies on other crimes, Mrs. Yarbrough. We do not welcome interference with our cases. If you learn anything more, please pass it along immediately.” I promised I would, left Eileen a pound for her paper and electricity, and headed upstairs. This was, I reminded myself, a vacation in every sense, including a vacation from what Joe Riddley called, inelegantly, “meddling in murder.”

  22

  I went upstairs to find Laura standing in the dark by the window, looking out over the invisible hills. When I heard a repressed little sniff, it felt like a repeat of that night with Joyce.

  “Do you want me to leave?” Whether she was grieving Jim, worried about Kenny, or just plumb worn out from all that hill walking, she deserved her privacy.

  “No.” She spoke in a chokey little voice. “I’m just feeling a little lonesome.”

  “For Ben?” I asked hopefully.

  “For anybody to climb with and talk to. I know I ought to be able to enjoy all this on my own. I am,” she added fiercely, like she was trying to convince herself, “but I kept seeing things this afternoon I wanted to point out to somebody, and twelve-year-old Girl Guides weren’t enough.” She gave a rueful laugh. “And just now, I was thinking that none of this awful stuff would seem quite so awful if I had—oh, it’s dumb.”

  I went over and stood near enough for comfort, but not close enough to make her feel hemmed in. “It’s not dumb, honey. Having somebody around to share the good stuff makes it even better, and talking with somebody about awful stuff like what has happened today can make it seem less awful. Sometimes just having them there is enough. That’s what Ben did when your folks died, wasn’t it?” Joe Riddley claims I’m real good at beating dead horses.

  “I wasn’t talking about Ben, necessarily.” She moved a step away from me.

  “No, but he’s a good propper-upper. What was it we nicknamed him back then? A Boy Scout totem pole—a wooden face with a kind heart?”

  She gave a quick snort of disapproval. “He’s not so wooden when he gets to know you.”

  She didn’t have to tell me that. Joe Riddley and I had made it a point to get to know Ben better these past few months, since we had seen him getting more and more interested in Laura. After all, we were the closest thing to parents she had left. “He’d be good to have along right now,” I told her. “We could both use some propping up.”

  She wiped her nose, her tears gone. “Do you miss Joe Riddley and wish he’d come?”

  Convinced we’ll have to answer someday for lies we tell, I was forced to admit, “Well, I’m kind of glad he’s not here right now. If he was, he’d be wanting a full explanation of how I managed to be in the chapel when Jim’s body was found, and how I managed to be up on the hill when Jim quarreled with the laird’s brother-in-law.”

  She turned in surprise. “You were there when they found Jim? You didn’t mention that.”

  “Well, I was. Remember how I went down to the chapel with the priest after dinner? He and Roddy found Jim then, when they started to move the coffins over so Roddy could clean the narthex. They were supposed to be empty.”

  She fetched a tissue and blew her nose. “Where did the coffins come from, again?”

  I had suspected she wasn’t listening wholeheartedly that afternoon when I’d told the story. Not until I’d gotten to Jim’s death had she really begun paying attention.

  I bent and switched on the bedside lamp. “Sit down,” I invited, taking a seat on my bed and patting the space next to me. When we were both comfortable, I said, “According to the joiner—the man who made and delivered the coffins—Jim ordered them sent to the chapel for the play. I saw the order myself. ”

  “Jim? What did he have to do with the play?”

  “Not a blessed thing, according to Joyce. Nor do coffins, for that matter. They weren’t needed at all. So that order is one of life’s little mysteries. Another is why Jim told them to take the coffins to ‘the chapel’ instead of to ‘St. Catherine’s Chapel.’ You’d think whoever told him to order them—if somebody did—would have known the difference.” I took time out to explain about the two churches and their common village appellations, finishing up, “The greatest mystery is how Jim wound up in one of them.”

  “Poor Jim.” We were silent for a moment. Finally she asked, “But you had already seen him quarreling with the laird’s brother-in-law? The one Sherry claims cheated her aunt Rose?”

  “Yep, the same one who turned up dead after Jim did. And I did get the feeling he was the kind of man who could steal old ladies’ retirement funds and never look back.”

  I filled her in on why Jim had come to town and what his argument with Norwood had been about. I didn’t tell her that Norwood might have been killed with Kenny’s sgian dubh, though. I still didn’t trust her feelings for Kenny. Besides, Scarlett O’Hara was not the only Southern woman smart enough to know some things can be worried about tomorrow.

  Laura’s response to what I told her was different from mine. I was caught up in the question of who killed Jim. She, with an MBA, couldn’t figure out why he had been planning to go into partnership with the laird. “I mean, why choose this village?”

  “Because he knew Norwood—or at least Norwood’s sister, the laird’s wife.”

  “Nonsense, Mac. When you’re starting up a business of that magnitude, you don’t run through a list of people you know who might be interested in putting a hotel in their hometown. You look for the ideal location. Then you figure out what leverage and networks you have that could help. Besides, didn’t you say the laird’s wife was Jim’s first wife’s friend? That’s a mighty strange partnership.”

  “I forgot to mention that she has the money.” I explained about Kitty’s former magnate.

  “So Kitty and Jim were building the hotel?”

  “No, when I spoke to the laird this morning, he was quite definite that he and Jim—”

  “You spoke to the laird?”

  That entailed a little detour to explain about my cemetery encounter with Godfrey and his master. “He clearly said he and Jim were planning to put up a first-class hotel to attract the skiing crowd, and that Jim was planning to add a golf course to attract visitors year-round.”

  “But why Auchnagar? The Guides were grumbling this afternoon that the skiing isn’t reliable. Some winters they get very little snow. They were unanimous that you’d do better to go to Braemar or Aviemore to ski. And Auchnagar isn’t near a major city. A good golf course needs other attractions nearby for nongolfing spouses.”

  “It’s a lovely place.” I felt compelled to defend my village of origin.

  “It’s pretty,” she conceded, “but what is there to do besides hike?” She sat and thought a few minutes. “Choosing Auchnagar for a development of that type would mean developing on a smaller scale than Jim was capable of doing. He had to know that, so he must have had some really compelling incentive to come here.”

  “Like what? A tax write-off?”

  “No, I don’t mean he’d lose money on the project, just that he wouldn’t make what he could elsewhere. It’s like when Daddy opened a used car lot down in Douglas. It’s never made as much as it could have if he had put it nearer I-75, but he put it there because his cousin Swanson wanted to live near his mother and take care of her. Daddy always referred to it as our ‘family plot’—meaning not a cemetery plot, but a plot to help Aunt Gladys stay in her own hometown for the rest of her life. Otherwise, Swanson would have had to move he
r and the rest of his family somewhere he could find work. The lot has never made a lot of money, but Daddy said we’d never close it so long as it continues to provide a decent living for the folks who work there.”

  She stopped and gave me a questioning look, like it was now my turn, but I was still recovering from yet another example of the fine man Skye MacDonald had been, with one notable exception. Finally, when the silence grew long, I told her, “If you’re expecting me to give you a readout of Jim Gordon’s mental processes, honey, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”

  “But you have to admit, it’s odd.”

  “Watty put a hotel here—or bought one.” I was still stung at what felt like a slur on my ancestors’ birthplace. “It seems to be doing all right.”

  “Watty did what?”

  That entailed an explanation of Watty’s low-down deception.