Murder Go Round

by Carol J. Perry

  “A ‘caper’? How exciting.” My aunt beamed. “Sit down, Pete. Have a muffin. Maralee, pour Pete a cup of coffee, won’t you, dear?”

  Once we were all seated, Pete pulled the ever-present notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket. “What I’m here to ask you about mostly, Miss Russell, is that van you saw last night, and the men who took your trash bags.”

  “I don’t know that I can tell you anything useful,” she said. “I only went to the window because O’Ryan was making such a fuss. I do wish I’d paid more attention now, of course.” She shrugged. “But I thought it was just the usual rubbish collection, I glanced out there, scolded the cat for waking me up, and went directly back to bed.” O’Ryan looked up from his red bowl and gave her his I-told-you-so look.

  “Just try your best.” Pete’s tone was gentle. “Can you describe the van for me?”

  “Well, it was a big one. It had a door on the side. It had one in the back too.”

  “Were both doors open?”

  “Why, yes. I think they were. And, Pete,” she said, smiling, “both men were putting the bags into the van. One at each door. I remember that now.”

  “They must have been in a hurry,” I said.

  She nodded. “Didn’t want anyone to notice. But O’Ryan noticed, didn’t you, good boy?” The cat ignored the question and stalked from the room.

  “Anything else?”

  “They were each wearing big gloves. Like the regular rubbish men do.”

  Pete scribbled in his notebook. “What color was the van?”

  “It was a light color, I’m sure. Maybe white or silver. It could even be pale blue. It’s those new streetlights they put in. I know they save electricity, but they make the colors look strange. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Pete said. “If I showed you some pictures of vans, could you tell me if any of them resemble the one you saw?”

  “I’ll try.” She reached for the red-framed reading glasses lying on top of one of the paper piles.

  He unfolded a sheet of color photos, showing side views of about a dozen vehicles and placed it in front of my aunt. She leaned closer. “It was shaped quite a bit like this one, but not so many windows.” Pursing her lips, she moved her finger across the photos. “Ha! There it is. It looked like this one, only not red.”

  She’d selected a 2013 Chevy City Express cargo van. She shot Pete an inquiring look. “Does that make sense?”

  “Sure does.” He returned the sheet of photos to his pocket. “We’ve looked through that video you two thoughtfully asked Ms. Foster to save for us. Looks like we have a match.”

  “Same van?” I asked.

  He handed me a grainy photo. “See what you think, Nancy.”

  It was a light-colored Chevy City Express cargo van, all right. “It’s a 2012,” I said. “But you nailed it, Aunt Ibby.” I squinted at the picture. “Could you make out the license plate, Pete?”

  “The good news is we could. The bad news is it’s a stolen vehicle.”

  “How about the men?” Aunt Ibby pushed the glasses down onto the end of her nose and peered over the top. “Any possible ID there?”

  “No prints on anything so far, and they both wore those damned hoodies so the faces were mostly covered in the surveillance tape. But we got pretty good descriptions from the employees they’d talked to at the store.” He reached for a second muffin. “These are good. Tabitha’s?”

  “No. Mine. Glad you like them.”

  “You think the trash stealers are involved in that man’s murder, don’t you?” I asked. “That’s why you’re spending time on it.”

  “You’re right. That’s why I want you two to stay out of it.” Very grim cop face. “No more undercover work. Got it?”

  Aunt Ibby and I nodded in unison and murmured promises to cease and desist meddling in police business. I meant it when I said I’d stop, but my aunt wasn’t ready to give up.

  “Pete,” she said, “can you share the descriptions the employees gave of the men? Maybe if we have an idea of what they look like, we’d know whom we should avoid.”

  “Okay. That’s reasonable. Here’s what I have so far.” He consulted the notebook. “One had dark hair and a beard. He’s big. At least about six-three or more. The other one is shorter, five-ten. Blond. Clean-shaven. The blond one did most of the talking. The other one spoke with an accent. Ms. Foster said Polish or Russian. We have an artist working on sketches.”

  Aunt Ibby leaned back in her chair. “The matryoshkas. And the samovar.”

  Pete looked up. “What?”

  “Russian,” I said. “There were Russian things in the locker. You might want to check on Stasia too, the woman you said is harmless? River says she thinks she’s some kind of a Russian princess or something.”

  Pete scribbled faster. After a moment he put his pencil and notebook on the table, not in his pocket, so I knew that more questions might be coming. I waited. Aunt Ibby was quiet. “You kept some of the Russian things, didn’t you?”

  “We did,” my aunt said. “Some of them are still in the boxes. I can unpack them if you like, but the best one of all is right here in the dining room. Come on.” She stood and motioned for us to follow.

  The silver samovar sparkled, mirror bright, in the center of the long mahogany table. I could see the swirling colors and pinpoints of light before I’d even crossed the threshold of the room.

  CHAPTER 11

  Aunt Ibby’s excited voice, chattering to Pete about Russian hallmarks and silver purity, seemed to come from a distance, like the teacher’s voice in the Charlie Brown cartoons. I moved toward the samovar, grudgingly aware of both the beauty and the utility of the thing, while at the same time focusing my attention on the image beginning to take shape on one of its smooth, curving sides.

  A row of people, six men, their backs to me, stood at the rail of a vessel. I could see the ocean stretching to the horizon—could almost feel the roll of the ship. That was all. In a blink the scene was gone. Pete’s and Aunt Ibby’s voices were again distinct. Neither of them had apparently noticed my momentary distraction.

  As I turned away from the samovar, Aunt Ibby lifted it from the table, turning it over so that Pete could see the bottom. “See?” she said. “It has the Kokoshnik mark. Czar Nicholas II introduced it in 1896.” I looked at where she pointed. A woman wearing a kerchief was pictured in an oval, along with some letters and numbers.

  “Uh-huh.” Pete didn’t sound very interested. “Well, I need to get back to work. I’ve got the night off, after all. Lee, want to catch a movie or something?”

  “Love to,” I said. “Did you get around to talking to Scott Palmer? About the business card? You didn’t tell us.”

  Change the subject. Don’t think about the ship. Deal with it later.

  “Yeah. I spoke to Palmer today,” Pete said. “I had to ask him to come down to the station and talk to us about the . . . deceased.”

  I frowned. That didn’t sound good. “Why did Scott have to go to the station? Couldn’t you talk to him at WICH-TV?”

  It seemed to take a long time for Pete to answer. “Chief Whaley had a few questions. They found Palmer’s prints in that black Toyota.”

  “What does that mean?” Aunt Ibby asked. “Is Scott involved somehow in all this? The locker? The dead man? I don’t understand.”

  I didn’t understand either, but didn’t say so. There was so darned much I didn’t understand. I watched Pete’s face.

  “He says the man was an old reporter pal of his. Got into town a couple of days ago—been staying at Palmer’s place. The car’s a rental. Palmer admits he drove it a couple of times, showing his friend around Salem.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” I said. “But why was Scott’s friend following Aunt Ibby? Or do you think that could have been Scott?”

  Pete shook his head. “Nope. Palmer was at the TV station all that morning. He’s in the clear there. Chief wanted to get a look at the dead man’s belongings. The stuff he lef
t at Palmer’s apartment.”

  “Scott agreed to that, didn’t he?”

  “Sure. Don’t worry. Probably no problem there at all.”

  “Probably?” I didn’t like the sound of that. I was about to ask what he meant when his phone buzzed and, frowning, he pulled it from his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said. “Have to take this.” He stepped back into the kitchen and returned just seconds later. “Have to get back to the station. Thanks for the coffee, Miss Russell. I’ll let myself out.” He started for the foyer, then turned back toward us. “Oh, Lee. You can stop calling the victim DG. They’ve released the name. Eric Dillon.”

  It had a vaguely familiar ring to it, but I was still puzzling over my vision of those men at the ship’s rail and didn’t give the name much thought. I said good-bye to Pete and waited until I heard the front door close. I was anxious to tell my aunt what I’d seen. Maybe she’d be able to make some sense of it.

  “Aunt Ibby,” I began, but she was already on her way out of the dining room.

  “Come to the den with me, Maralee,” she said, hurrying toward the room that houses a state-of-the-art computer and her many other electronic gadgets. “Eric Dillon! Imagine that! The papers will be full of that news, won’t they?”

  Dutifully I followed, searching my memory for a clue to the elusive name. The computer screen came to life, her fingers flew over the keys, as a tiny flash of recognition popped into my head. “Eric Dillon. A writer,” I said. “Something about treasure hunting, wasn’t it?”

  “Right. Lost and Found: Treasures of California. Then there was Lost and Found: Treasures of the Florida Coast, Lost and Found: Treasures of the Pyramids and a couple of similar ones. Makes me wonder what he was looking for in Salem.”

  “I wonder what he was looking for in Salem that got him killed,” I said, “and mostly I wonder what our storage locker had to do with it.”

  “Look at this. His Facebook page says he’s working on a new project—one that’s taken years to research and has taken him all over America.”

  I looked over her shoulder. Dillon had posted a picture of a map of the United States. “Does he give a hint about the subject matter? Another treasure book?”

  “I don’t see anything else here about it. But look at this. Posted the day before yesterday.” She pointed. “It’s one of those selfie pictures you young folks like to take. It’s him—and isn’t that the Witch Museum in the background?”

  The photo dispelled all doubts about the identity of the man in my vision. Eric Dillon was the dead man beside the little pine tree, and the man behind the wheel of the black Toyota. “It is,” I said, “and that’s Scott Palmer beside him.”

  She peered closely at the screen. “So it is. Pete told us Mr. Dillon was staying with Scott, and that Scott was showing his friend around Salem.”

  “That seems to back up Scott’s story, doesn’t it? What does the caption say?”

  “‘Met up with an old broadcast buddy. Showing me the sights around Salem, MA.’” There was a series of shots taken around the city—mostly of well-known tourist attractions, like the House of the Seven Gables, the Witch House, the Ropes Memorial Mansion. There was a picture of Scott standing in front of the WICH-TV building, shots of a couple of witch shops and one of a house I didn’t recognize. There were no more selfies.

  Aunt Ibby clicked on the house photo, enlarging it. “Know where that house is, Maralee?”

  “No. Looks like a plain, old, everyday New England house to me.” It was a three-story, peaked-roof, gray-clapboard house. Nothing looked special about it. “Where is it?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s just a couple of streets away from here. Williams Street.”

  Williams is one of Salem’s many one-way streets. It runs from the Common down to Bridge Street and isn’t on any route I’d used in years. “Could be,” I said.

  “I think I’ll take a walk over there.” She clicked off the computer and stood, smoothing her skirt.

  “What for?”

  “Just curious. All his other photos are of famous places, popular shops. All, except this one. Maybe there’s a historical plaque on it or something. Want to come with me?”

  “I’d like to,” I said, “but I still have work to do on my lesson plan. Think I’ll go up to the study and see what titles we have on investigative reporting. By the way, do we have any Eric Dillon books up there?”

  “Hmmm. Try nine thirteen point thirty-two,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.” Not many home libraries have books filed according to the Dewey decimal system, but ours does.

  “Let me know if you find anything interesting,” I called as O’Ryan and I climbed the front staircase to the second-floor study. It may be my favorite place in the whole house. The walls are lined with books and my great-grandfather Forbes’s huge desk is in the center of the room, his brass ship’s clock on the wall. I bypassed the new computer perched incongruously on top of an old wooden card catalog cabinet and went directly to the nonfiction section my aunt had suggested. Not surprisingly, she’d been right. I pulled Lost and Found: Treasures of the Florida Coast from the shelf, sat in the comfortable leather swivel chair behind the desk, hoping to learn something about the sort of treasure Eric Dillon might be hunting in Salem. The cat curled up in a pretty patch of sun on the Oriental rug and closed his eyes.

  The book, a fairly slim volume, was divided into ten sections, each one detailing somebody’s lucky Florida find. The author, in his investigative reporter mode, had obviously done some serious research, tracking down original source materials, interviewing the searchers themselves for recent finds or close family descendants if the treasure was from long ago. Some accounts detailed prizes of enormous value, like Mel Fisher’s 450-million-dollar cache of gold, silver and jewels from the Spanish galleon Atocha. Another told of a treasure fleet lost off the coast of Florida in a 1715 hurricane and of the hoard of gold and silver from that disastrous voyage, which a fortunate Florida family found in 2013.

  I put the book down. Those men I’d seen on the samovar were surely aboard a ship. Not a Spanish galleon though. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize their clothes. Not ancient, but not modern either. I couldn’t seem to focus my thoughts.

  “Come on, O’Ryan,” I said to the sleeping cat. “Let’s go upstairs and try to bring back that scene in the bedroom mirror. It might be clearer there than it was in the doggoned fancy silver teakettle—kind of like a big-screen TV.”

  I couldn’t figure out even the slightest connection between the dead writer, my poor ruined horse and the trash-stealing bandits. Maybe a little “gazing” would help somehow. I knew from past experience that I could often call up a vision if I wanted. The problem was, I hardly ever wanted to do so. The things were not fun for me. Never were. I’m sure some people think such a “gift” would be great to have. For me, mostly it hasn’t been. What five-year-old kid would want to see her parents’ deaths? Ever since this long-forgotten “gift” had recently returned, all it has ever brought me is scenes of death and dying.

  I carried the Dillon book with me, planning to store it safely in the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcase for a more careful reading later. With the cat following me, I returned to my apartment, passing through the kitchen, admiring the effect of my recent cleaning, and heading down the short hall to the living room.

  “O’Ryan, you naughty boy,” I scolded, spotting one of my bronzed pencil sharpeners on the floor. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” The cat looked unconcerned as I replaced Lady Liberty in her accustomed spot for the second time that day.

  CHAPTER 12

  With the Dillon book safely stashed in the bookcase, I returned to the kitchen. O’Ryan stayed behind in the living room, choosing to sit in the zebra print wing chair, giving him a fine view of a pair of robins in the tree outside the bay window.

  I was tempted to follow his lead, to sit in one of the Lucite chairs and look out the kitchen window, contemplating trees and birds. But that would be stallin
g, avoiding the tall, oval mirror and I knew it.

  Shoulders squared, I marched into the bedroom, sat on the edge of my bed and faced the glass. “Okay, mirror,” I said aloud, feeling quite like the Evil Queen, “show me what you’ve got.”

  The same shipboard picture popped right up, but this time it covered the whole surface of the mirror. The feeling of motion was more pronounced this time and I could see the rolling ocean waves clearly. The six men, as before, had their backs to me, but this time I could make out some details of their clothing. Four wore gray fedoras and the other two wore what I call “newsboy hats.” Long-sleeved white shirts were topped by vests. I’d had enough experience with theater wardrobe to be pretty good with identifying period dress. I pegged these as early twentieth century, maybe around World War I.

  I took a deep breath and whispered, “Would you turn around? Face me?”

  That didn’t work, but the scene changed. Just as the vision of the Toyota had expanded, like a camera moving back and widening the view, more of the ship showed. I could see other people lined up along the rail—men, women and even a few children, all in turn-of-the-century dress. In the far distance, beyond the waves, was a familiar outline. It was the Statue of Liberty.

  No doubt about it. I was looking at people arriving in America over a century ago.

  “But what does it mean? Who are you?” Frustration, almost to the point of tears, washed over me.

  What good are visions when they don’t make the least bit of sense?

  I’m not proud of it, but I possess the legendary redhead’s temper. Over the years I’ve learned to control it pretty well, but at that moment I wanted to kick that damned mirror across the room. Of course I didn’t do it. Seven years’ bad luck and all that. I stood up and gave it a rude push. “Go away,” I said loudly. Just before the picture faded, one of the men turned, facing me, and smiled.