Murder Go Round

by Carol J. Perry

  “It doesn’t seem as though they’ve done anything illegal,” I admitted. “But could you save the video for a few days? Just in case the police might be interested?”

  She looked doubtful, but agreed anyway. We three exchanged the usual parting pleasantries and I followed my aunt through the crowded aisles and outside into the sunshine.

  “What do you think about all that?” I could tell that Aunt Ibby was intrigued by what we’d learned. I was too. “Quite a lot to take in, isn’t it? First someone follows you home from the sale, then the Stasia woman follows Pete and me to Paul’s shop, then two men in a van follow her to Goodwill. Where does it all lead?”

  “You know what, Maralee?” She gave me one of her wise-old-owl looks as we climbed into my car. “Strangely enough, it makes me think of a carousel, going around and around, with none of the horses ever catching up with the one ahead of him.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Even after we got home to the house on Winter Street, I couldn’t seem to shake Aunt Ibby’s carousel analogy. We were both quiet as I put the top up and pulled into the garage. I locked the ’Vette, then pulled the door handle of the Buick, making sure it was locked too.

  Aunt Ibby gave me a questioning look. I realized that I was being just a tad paranoid, and shrugged my shoulders, giving a short, unfunny laugh. “Can’t help it,” I said. “I can’t help feeling kind of—well, violated. I know that all those guys took was trash we didn’t want, and they didn’t even step on our property to do it. I think it’s more being followed that’s got me spooked.”

  I made sure the garage doors were locked too, and we started up the path to the house together, passing my aunt’s carefully tended garden. Tall sunflowers still bloomed there, and blue morning glories twined around the wrought-iron fence, where the wooden horse had so recently leaned. O’Ryan waited for us in the back hall, and greeted us with enthusiastic purrs and “mrrows.” He did figure eights between us, rubbing soft fur against our ankles.

  “It’s lovely to get such a warm welcome home, isn’t it? How did we ever get along without you, O’Ryan?” She bent to pat the cat. “Are you coming in, Maralee? Or going right up to your apartment?”

  “I think I’ll go on up. Have some housecleaning waiting up there for me, and since school starts in a couple of weeks, I have some prep work to do for my classes. And,” I glanced at my watch, “I think I need to call Pete pretty soon to tell him about what we learned this morning.” I unlocked the door to the two flights of stairs leading to my place. The cat darted ahead of me. “Looks like O’Ryan plans to help.”

  By the time I arrived in my living room, O’Ryan was already seated on the couch, grooming his whiskers. He has the convenience of a cat door and seems to take great pleasure in being the first one home. There’s another cat door in my kitchen entrance, which opens onto the third-floor hall. From there our lovely, old polished oak staircase curves its graceful way down the two flights to the main foyer and the front-door exit on the Winter Street side of the house—in stark contrast to the unadorned and narrow back stairs the cat and I had just climbed. There are more stairs, leading from the third floor up to the attic, but that’s a climb I rarely take. Bad memories from up there. Really bad ones.

  Once inside, I gave the bay window an appraising look, picturing once again how the horse might look there, surrounded by greenery. This time, though, in my imagination, he was fully restored, his colors vivid, his windblown mane bright with golden highlights. O’Ryan looked in that direction too, but who knows what cats see? Especially that one.

  I hadn’t been kidding when I’d told Aunt Ibby I had housework to do. I ran my fingers across the top of the Mission-style oak barrister’s bookcase where, behind glass panels, I housed my textbooks from Emerson College, the set of World Book Encyclopedias my aunt had given me when I was in first grade, and my Sue Grafton mysteries, A through Y. I found dust. Quite a lot of it. Old houses like ours tend to be dusty, but even so, this was a bit much.

  My collection of bronzed figural pencil sharpeners were arranged in an orderly row across the top of the piece. I’d been collecting them since I was eight. It was Aunt Ibby’s idea. They’re quite inexpensive, there must be a thousand different designs, they’re found in just about any antiques store, and the hunt had kept me quietly occupied while my aunt dragged me around from shop to shop. There were about fifty of the little metal sculptures in my display. I picked up a miniature Empire State Building. It needed dusting. They all did.

  “Come on, cat,” I said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  He gave me a don’t-be-silly look, stretched, turned to face the other side of the room and went to sleep. Or at least gave a good imitation of a sleeping cat. I tiptoed out of the room, down a short hall past the linen closet and bathroom and into the kitchen.

  I love my kitchen. It looks efficient, thanks to the appliances Aunt Ibby had installed before I’d even seen it. But she left the furnishings and decorating up to me, so it looks exactly the way I want it to. My table and chairs are clear, beautiful Lucite, circa 1970. Some of the cabinets have glass doors to display vintage Russel Wright china and 1950s Pyrex bowls. River told me once that I needed a picture of fruit to balance the energy and that’s grown into an arrangement of small antique watercolor paintings of berries and veggies on the northeast wall. My aunt had hung the cuckoo clock just next to the entrance to my bedroom.

  I sat at the table and looked around, satisfied. “It’s almost perfect,” I told myself aloud. “Now if I could just learn to cook . . .” You’d think that after spending my formative years with Aunt Ibby, some of that talent might have rubbed off. Didn’t happen. With a sigh I opened the under-the-sink cabinet, pulled out a few spray bottles and a new roll of paper towels and got to work.

  By the time the cuckoo announced noon, the dusting, sweeping, mopping and polishing chores were about half finished. Feeling virtuous, I took a break, poured a tall glass of sweet tea—a habit I’d picked up when I lived in Florida—cut myself a thick slice of Aunt Ibby’s chocolate chip banana bread, sat on a stool at the counter and speed-dialed Pete’s private number.

  He picked up right away. “Hi. Do you miss me already?”

  “Of course I do. Didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “Nope. Had a real power nap. Good thing because the chief’s got us all working overtime on the new case at Carbone’s. Thought I’d take a ride over to that Goodwill store before I clock in.”

  “Sure. Well, look. Aunt Ibby and I might have . . . um, saved you some time on the Goodwill thing,” I said, knowing as soon as the words were out of my mouth that he wasn’t going to be happy about it.

  He wasn’t. He used his I’m-trying-to-be-patient cop voice. “Could you be more specific about that?”

  So I blurted it all out. I began by telling him about Stasia looking through the cart as soon as we’d left. “She said she was looking for doll clothes, but apparently she didn’t take anything.”

  “Wait a minute. Who the hell is Stasia?”

  “I guess you didn’t see her at the storage locker sale, did you? Big woman. Orange hair. Rides a pink scooter.”

  “Oh, yeah. Local character, harmless. What else?”

  I told him, in as much detail as I could remember, what Grace Foster had said about the two men in the van buying the whole lot for two hundred dollars. “They even slashed the Mickey Mouse. Tore out his stuffing,” I said. “But, Pete, the store has outdoor security cameras and I asked her to be sure to save the videos for you.”

  His “that’s good” was gruff. “Obviously, something from that locker is worth a lot to somebody.”

  “Aunt Ibby thinks the van was the same one the men who took our trash used.”

  “Not too surprising. I’ll come by later and talk to her about that. First I have to see what the ME has to say about the victim and find out what forensics has found at the scene and in that Toyota,” he said. “And I’ll send a uniform over to pick up that video and what’s left o
f Mickey Mouse.”

  “Okay. Well, maybe I’ll see you later then.”

  “Sure thing. Gotta go now.”

  By this time the nosy cat had given up pretending to sleep. He strolled into the kitchen, hopped up onto the windowsill and sat, watching me. I sighed, drank the last of the tea, put the dishes into the dishwasher, got a new roll of paper towels and prepared to resume cleaning.

  “Come on, big boy,” I said. “You can at least keep me company.” I put the roll of towels under my arm and wheeled the vacuum cleaner into the living room. I know most animals don’t like the sound of the vacuum, but O’Ryan doesn’t mind it at all. He also likes thunderstorms and enjoys watching lightning from the kitchen window. Go figure.

  It didn’t take too long to put the living room to rights. It’s the least-used space in the apartment. The finishing touch was the careful replacement of the little pencil sharpeners on top of the bookcase. Without warning, and with a leap that looked like slow motion, O’Ryan landed on all fours—smack in the middle of the arrangement—without knocking over a single tiny coffee mill, U. S. Capitol Building or bust of Lincoln.

  “Nicely done, cat,” I told him. “Now let’s see if you can get down from there as gracefully as you got up.” With a snooty tilt of his head, O’Ryan, lifting each paw delicately, reversed direction, became airborne and made a soft landing on the carpet. So did my Statue of Liberty, a souvenir of a high-school class trip to New York City.

  “Good for you that these things are darned near indestructible,” I told him, replacing Lady Liberty on top of the bookcase. “You might at least look apologetic about it.” Unremorseful, he swished his tail and trotted back toward the kitchen while I headed for the bathroom and a nice, long shower-and-shampoo session.

  I emerged half an hour later, body clean, relaxed and lotioned, red hair damp and much too curly, mind focused on school prep. Barefoot, dressed in faded jeans and a NASCAR sweatshirt, I spread textbooks, file folders, yellow legal pad, sharpened number-two pencils, a fresh cup of coffee and my laptop on the kitchen counter. I was prepared for serious work.

  The previous year my classes had covered TV production and we’d produced an award-winning documentary about the long history of the building where the school was located—the long-vacant Trumbull’s Department Store. The curriculum had been expanded this year to include investigative reporting. I looked forward to it. I’d come to enjoy my fairly new career as a teacher just as much as I’d enjoyed my years in front of the camera as a weathergirl, a shopping-channel host and, of course, my rather inauspicious and short-lived stint as a phone-in psychic. With Pete’s encouragement, I’d also been taking an online course in criminology. I found that I liked learning about why criminals behave as they do.

  For instance, why would someone steal somebody else’s trash—or murder an innocent Mickey Mouse?

  “Don’t be silly,” I told myself aloud. “Neither of those things count as criminal behavior.” I thought about the dismembered Mickey. “Clearly, they’re looking for something. But what?” There was real criminal behavior going on at Paul Carbone’s shop though. A man had been murdered.

  They not only looked inside a stuffed toy, but they looked inside a wooden horse. Did they find whatever it is?

  I tried hard to dismiss the distracting thoughts, to concentrate on the creation of my lesson plan for “Introduction to Investigative Reporting.” The Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts—named for department store founder Oliver Wendall Trumbull’s wife—better known around Salem as the Tabby, is what the brochures refer to as an “educational enhancement” institution. Located in the revamped old Trumbull’s Department Store, it’s now a professionally staffed school where students of all ages can pursue their dreams of dancing, painting, acting, singing, writing and, in the case of my classes, TV production and performance. There are no entrance requirements, no final exams and no degrees offered, but so far a significant number of Tabby grads had achieved success in their chosen artistic endeavors. One of my students from last year’s class, Therese Della Monica, already had a part-time job as call screener for Tarot Time with River North, and one of the summer program acting students, Daphne Trent, had signed a Hollywood movie contract!

  I’d just begun making notes on the importance of developing reporting skills when I began feeling a little bit nervous about teaching this particular subject. After all, even though I’d taken a semester on the topic at Emerson, I’d never done any actual investigative reporting myself. Oh, I’d wanted to. Just never had the opportunity.

  Make the opportunity. You can learn along with the class, I thought.

  O’Ryan chose that moment to jump up onto the empty stool next to me. “What do you think, cat? I know the basics. I’ve seen it done, working in different TV stations. And I have all these textbooks.” I pointed to the volumes stacked on the counter. “Look. Fundamentals of Investigative Journalism, Understanding the Freedom of Information Act, Social Media Tools in Investigative Reporting. I even have Barbara Walters’s How to Talk with Anybody About Practically Anything.”

  Propping big yellow-striped paws on the edge of the counter, O’Ryan looked back and forth between me and the assembled materials. After a long moment he leaned toward me and gave my elbow a pink-tongued lick. I took that as affirmation of my teaching ability, and for some crazy reason, it actually made me feel much better about the whole lesson plan thing.

  I scribbled away on the yellow pad, barely counting the intermittent “coo-coos” issuing from the clock on the wall. My coffee was cold and my bottom numb when I finally stood, stretching cramped muscles, satisfied with my progress and ravenously hungry. It was three o’clock. I’d had that early-morning breakfast with Pete and a couple of slices of that killer banana bread. I weighed my options. Sparse leftovers from my refrigerator or the always-bounteous spread from Aunt Ibby’s.

  No contest. I headed downstairs.

  CHAPTER 10

  O’Ryan was already snarfing down chopped chicken livers from his own red bowl when I arrived. I’d taken the front stairs down to the first-floor foyer, which opens into Aunt Ibby’s living room, while the cat had apparently scooted down the back stairs and through his cat door into her kitchen.

  My aunt looked up from a paper-strewn table. “Hello, dear. Housework and homework all finished?”

  “Done,” I said. “I’m here to raid your refrigerator.”

  “Mi Frigidaire, su Frigidaire. Help yourself.”

  I opened the double-doored beauty and studied the orderly contents. “What’s with all the paper? Working on the cookbook?”

  When my previous year’s class was studying the Trumbull family’s history for the documentary production, Aunt Ibby had discovered Tabitha Trumbull’s handwritten recipe collection in the vertical files at the library. She’d decided to transcribe, update and publish the Tabitha Trumbull Cookbook, to be used as a fund-raiser for the library’s ongoing bookmobile project.

  She waved a hand over the paper piles. “I know it looks disorganized,” she said, “but it’s really coming together quite nicely. I’m just trying to translate what ‘a pinch of ginger’ or ‘a dab of butter’ means to today’s cook. By the way, how did you like the chocolate chip banana bread?”

  “Divine. I had some for lunch. Saving the rest for Pete. Can I heat up this vegetable soup?”

  “Sure. The mini chocolate chips were my idea. I don’t think Tabitha would mind. Did you get a chance to talk to Pete about our little excursion this morning?”

  “I did. I don’t think he was too happy about it. He’s sending somebody over to Goodwill to pick up the surveillance video and the Mickey Mouse remains.” I popped the soup bowl into the microwave. “Pete doesn’t seem to think that Stasia being there means anything.”

  “You know, Maralee, I’ve been thinking about that. Grace said the woman was looking for doll clothes. Remember I told you there’s a box full of lovely handmade ones in the things I saved from the locker?”

/>   I carefully moved aside a few of her papers and put the bowl of fragrant soup on the table. “I’d forgotten about that. How could she have known about them? That was one of the sealed boxes, wasn’t it?”

  My aunt nodded. “Uh-huh. It was just marked ‘Dresses.’ Think we should tell Pete about it?”

  “I do. He said he’d come by later to talk to you about the van you saw—and the men who took our trash bags. This soup is fabulous. Tabitha’s?”

  “No. Mine. I didn’t really get a good look at the van, you know. Or those men either. Didn’t seem important. I thought it was the regular rubbish collection. Of course O’Ryan knew better.” The cat looked up at the sound of his name. “He could probably tell us the license plate number if he could talk.”

  The phone in my jeans pocket vibrated. The texted message was brief. “It’s Pete. He wants to know if he can come over and talk to you now. Okay?”

  “Certainly. Tell him to come right on over.”

  I did. And he did. Only about ten minutes had passed before O’Ryan ran into the foyer. I followed and together we watched from one of the tall, narrow windows flanking the front door as Pete pulled up, parked the Crown Vic and hurried up the steps. He paused on the landing, smiled and bent to tap the spot where the cat’s pink nose pressed against the glass.

  I pulled the door open and we shared a chaste front-door kiss, while O’Ryan wound himself around Pete’s jean-clad ankles. “Come on out to the kitchen,” I said. “Aunt Ibby’s working on the cookbook.”

  “Hope I’m not interrupting genius at work.” He followed me down the hall to the cozy room where my aunt had reduced the paper clutter to two neatly stacked piles. She’d also put away my soup bowl, started a fresh pot of coffee and placed a basket of blueberry muffins on the table. How does she do that stuff so fast?

  “Hi, Ms. Russell,” Pete said. “I understand that Nancy Drew here brought you along as sidekick on her little Goodwill caper this morning.” Pete’s compared me to that famous girl detective practically since the day we met. At first I’m sure he thought I was just nosy because I asked so many questions about police work. Later, when he found that I was really interested, he suggested the online criminology course. I was just beginning my second year. Pete was already in his fourth.