by Judy Clemens
“She didn’t see them?”
“It was dark. She was asleep, then gradually awoke with the feeling of someone bending over her.”
“And?”
“And this person said she was going to pay for what she did.”
“Man? Woman?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“How did she die?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“For heaven’s sake. How convenient.”
“It’s not convenient. She’s dead! And not a medical professional.”
“I think you’d remember being strangled!”
“She wasn’t strangled. At least, the ER doc didn’t notice anything.”
“So, smothered?”
“No sign of that, either.”
“Poison?”
“Didn’t the doctor say natural causes?”
Casey glowered at Death. “What good are you if you can’t even tell how people died?”
Death gazed at her calmly. “I know you’re feeling a lot of angst right now—”
“Shut up.”
They drove in silence until Casey had a realization. “Lisa Rush.”
“What about her?”
“She was the person in the room. Everybody knows Vern spends half the night in the store, and she could have seen him through the window. She confronted Dottie, terrifying her into cardiac arrest. I almost did it myself earlier in the day but was able to calm her down, remember? Someone waking her up, whispering accusations…that’s enough to terrify even a healthy person.”
“That makes sense. Will you ask her?”
“I’ll have to. I basically told the ER doc someone murdered her. If all Marianne did was talk to her—”
“What you really mean is she broke into Dottie’s home and threatened her.”
“Right. Of course you’re right. There’s no excuse for that. At least not one that carries any weight.”
Relieved to have that solved—at least in theory—Casey concentrated on the road until she said, “So what is it?”
“I thought you figured it out.”
“Not how Dottie died. When you first appeared in the car you said something about what I need to do now.”
“Oh, that. You’ve got to search for proof.”
“Of someone killing her? I told the doctor what I suspected. Do I need to call the cops, too?”
“No, not that, although the cops probably would be a good idea. You need to search for proof of what Lisa was saying.”
“The party.”
“Of course the party. What if Dottie had something to do with it? What could that mean?”
Casey’s vision blurred for a few moments before she blinked and focused again. “I don’t think she could do that.”
“Because she’s a frail old lady?” Death’s voice came out flat with irony. “She wasn’t always frail and old.”
Casey glanced at Miss Daisy. “I know that. I just don’t want to think she could do that ever, even before I knew her. Because that also means…”
“That Vern did it?”
“That Vern lied. That he’s been lying all this time.” His voice rang in her head, a memory from Friday, when she ran to hide from the Beltmore police Officer. Oh, I’m a good liar, all right. Casey’s insides went cold.
“What would I be looking for, exactly? What would tell us she basically killed Nell’s grandmother? Or maybe I could find something proving she’s known all along where Marianne went? What?”
“You answered your own question. Does she still have the letter she received from Marianne? Part of a Halloween costume? An incriminating photograph? Anything to shed light on this mess.”
Casey let out a big sigh. All she really wanted was to go back to bed.
“If you put it off until tomorrow, Vern will be home. You can’t go through his stuff with him there.”
“But it’s almost morning. I’ll need to open the store.”
“I think the people of Armstrong will survive one day without their morning coffee. And it will be good for them to realize how much they rely on him.”
The street in Armstrong was quiet and dark. No curious gawkers. No caring neighbors. But then, why was she surprised? She suddenly realized—she was so ready to get out of this town. She pulled into the garage and shut the door. “Where should I start? The basement? That’s where Marianne’s box was hiding in her house.”
“Use your brain, sister.”
“My brain isn’t working on all cylinders, remember? One hour of sleep, and it’s the middle of the night.”
“I forget about the whole sleep thing. So I’ll help. You should start in their bedroom. You can search the rest of the place while he’s sleeping, if you don’t get through it all tonight.”
Casey prepared herself to move. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Death was waiting in the bedroom when she arrived, still an old woman, but this time…Miss Marple? Or Jessica Fletcher? Casey was confused—did the same actor portray both characters? “There aren’t a lot of hiding places in here. Shouldn’t take long.”
Casey tried not to feel like a horrible person. Going through a dead woman’s belongings mere hours after her passing…how messed up was that?
A quick, but much more thorough, search than she’d made when looking for the anonymous note took her through the closet, the dresser, and the nightstands, proving only that the Dailys—or at least one of them—liked things neat. Even the floor under the bed was free of dust bunnies. Casey didn’t find anything other than normal old people stuff. Clothes and shoes and books and Kleenex. Hand lotion. Baby aspirin. Denture cleaner.
The master bath was more of the same, and smelled strongly of lavender. She found the usual over-the-counter pills and creams you find in anyone’s medicine cabinet, plus a few more. A linen closet with towels and washcloths and first aid items. A shower chair and handrails by the toilet. Nothing exciting.
“I’ve hit all the possible hiding places in here.” Casey returned to the bedroom.
“So let’s move on. I would suggest going through this level, because it will be easier to check the basement surreptitiously, if he should be around.”
Casey followed Death’s advice and was on her knees checking out kitchen cabinets when there was a knock on the door. She pulled her head out of the shelf containing pots and pans. “Did I hear something?”
Death swooshed away. “Back door. It’s that youngish librarian. You know, the one from the library.”
“As befits a librarian,” Casey said dryly.
Casey opened the door. “Tara?”
“Hey.” Tara wore a thick tie-around sweater but still shivered, hugging herself. “Everything okay?”
Casey gestured her inside.
“I saw the ambulance earlier, but couldn’t get over here before they left. When I saw the lights now I wanted to see if I could do anything.” She peered around Casey. “Are they back? What happened?”
Casey pulled out a chair at the table and sat in the one across from it. Tara eased down slowly.
“Dottie died a couple hours ago.”
Tara gasped. “But didn’t you say it would be a few weeks?”
“That’s what the doctor said this morning.” Casey shook her head. “Yesterday morning.”
“Time.” Death yawned. “So unpredictable.”
Tara sat for a few moments, shaken. “So where’s Vern?”
“At the hospital. Taking care of things.”
“By himself?”
“The pastor’s there.”
“Pastor Echebarria? Good. He’s great with that sort of thing.” Her eyes filled. “Poor Vern.”
Casey turned away, not wanting tears. Too tired to fight them.
Tara notice
d the open cupboard doors. “So what are you doing?”
Casey went hot. How crass was it to be going through the Dailys’ house while Dottie’s body lay cooling in the hospital? She should be ashamed. But then…
“Remember what we were discussing at the library?”
“You mean the Halloween party?”
“That, and Marianne Rush disappearing.”
“Sure. What about it?”
Casey took a deep breath, not sure if she should disclose her secrets.
“You’ve got to trust somebody,” Death said.
Did she? She supposed so. And Tara was the only person to make the effort to find out if everything was okay with Dottie.
So Casey took the plunge. She shared who had sent the photo, and how Lisa Rush thought the Richard Nixon mask was her mom’s, which also meant Dorothy was there, which in turn meant Dottie and Vern had been lying all these years. She wondered aloud what this change of theories meant for Marianne’s disappearance and the town’s treatment of Dottie, and if the police knew about any of it.
“That’s why I have the lights on and I’m going through the house while Vern is still at the hospital trying to figure out life without his wife. If there is no evidence of a crime, or even of deception, I don’t feel I can tell anyone or go to the police or…” She threw her hands up. “I’m ashamed to be thinking this when they’ve been so kind to me and Dottie just passed away.”
“Well.” Death sounded a bit stunned. “That should cover it. I think that’s the most words I’ve heard you put together in, oh, years.”
Unlike Death, Tara sat silently. She swallowed. She chewed her lip. Did she think Casey was a horrible person? Was she going to go running to the police on her own? Would she tattle to Vern about Casey’s middle-of-the-night search?
Tara shifted in her chair. “So, do you need some help?”
Casey let out a sigh of relief. “I’ve done the master bedroom, the guest room slash office, the living room, and the half bath. When you got here I was partway through the kitchen.”
“Then let’s finish it up.” She strode to the middle of the linoleum. “Point me where you want me to go.”
Twenty minutes later they had gone through every cupboard, the drawer under the stove, canisters of baking staples, and the refrigerator. Nothing out of place or secretive.
“Freezer,” Death said.
Casey checked the small pullout at the bottom of the fridge. Nothing.
Tara stood with her hands on her hips. “Now where?”
Casey let her head fall back and tried to relax her shoulders. “We’re assuming it was Dottie who hid these things, right? Not Vern?”
“Vern is a businessman. And, well, you know, a guy. Lots less likely to be sentimental and keep something incriminating. He’d be more likely to burn it, or throw it out.”
“So we leave the garage for last?”
“Freezer,” Death said again.
Casey pointed. “Except for the deep freeze.”
They trooped out to the garage and dug quickly through the freezer, which held mostly packaged frozen dinners and three containers of frosted-over orange sherbet at various levels of use.
“I can’t see Dorothy hiding anything in here.” Tara surveyed the garage. “Not where Vern would spend a lot more time than she would. I can’t see her doing anything with the cars. The cars are much more Vern’s thing.”
“So that leaves the basement, unless we think she would have hidden it outside.”
“Can’t search in the dark. Besides, where would we look? They don’t have a shed, and unless we’re going to dig up the yard, I wouldn’t know where to start, unless it would be in the flowerbed between our properties.”
Casey dreaded more searching. “What about a crawl space above this ceiling?”
“Could be. Not sure Dorothy could get up there.”
“Remember this was forty-five years ago. If she wanted to hide something up there, she would have been able to.”
“True. Let’s check.”
The trap door was right above the car, with a string hanging down. Casey backed the car out, leaving the lights off, and closed the door again so if any neighbors were watching they wouldn’t know what was going on.
By the time she got back inside, Tara had opened the trap door and pulled down the built-in ladder. “I’m sort of afraid to look up there. Do you mind?”
Death flowed down the rungs. “It’s clear. Not even a mouse. Spiders, maybe.”
Casey climbed until her head and shoulders cleared the ceiling. Her phone’s flashlight showed her what she’d expected to see. “Nothing but an extra pack of shingles, some two-by-fours, and an old can of paint.”
“Well, it was worth a look.”
Casey and Tara reversed their earlier actions, and soon the car was back in the garage. They stood in the kitchen.
“Let’s go to the basement,” Tara said. ”If we get started, we’ll soon be done.”
Death groaned. “This is getting boring. I’ll be back to see if you find anything worth all this dust.” Death disappeared in a cloud of which Casey could only describe as asbestos. Casey coughed, waving her hand in front of her face.
“Okay?” Tara asked.
Casey nodded and headed downstairs.
They began in the furnace area, but quickly moved on to the main room. Tara started on the shelves of canned goods, and Casey dug under the pile of sleeping bags, which rested on some boxes. After going through three she’d found only canning supplies, a stash of stocking caps and scarves, and old paperback Westerns.
Casey sat on her heels. Lisa was positive it was her mom in that picture, and therefore Dottie alongside her. Other than the shirt Lisa believed to be her father’s, Casey could see no evidence a cop could use. And would that shirt even be evidence? The possibility of it still being in existence, and proving it was the same one, was so minimal it was hardly worth thinking about.
No matter how unlikely Casey thought the whole accusation, she couldn’t find anything to prove the opposite. She also couldn’t find anything to argue against Lisa’s other complaint—that Dottie had known, but refused to disclose, Marianne’s location. No letters, photos, or computer in the house which could hold e-mails. Not that there were such things back in the seventies. From what Vern had told Casey, Dottie pretty much believed Marianne had dropped off the face of the Earth. But then, maybe that was how she needed to see it if she had any chance of getting over the heartbreak of being deserted by her only friend.
“Any luck?” Tara stood over her, wiping her hands on her pants. “I’m done with those shelves.”
“I’m beginning to think we won’t find anything. I mean, what if she threw out the letter so Marianne’s family would never find it?”
“If we don’t keep looking, we’ll always wonder.”
So they kept at it, pawing through boxes containing antique dishes, high school yearbooks from the seventies—both Armstrong and Portland, and LPs of such groups as Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Simon and Garfunkel.
“Where are all their photos?” Tara asked. “They’ve got to have some somewhere, don’t they? I mean, who doesn’t have pictures? Especially people their age. I don’t have a lot of photos and stuff because they’re all online, but my grandparents have tons of albums. Takes up half their house.”
“I noticed that, too,” Casey said. “No photos anywhere. None upstairs. None on the walls. None—” She stood so suddenly her head spun.
Tara jumped up. “What is it?”
“There’s only one photo I’ve seen, and it’s not even a real one.” She strode to her room and flung open the door. The picture of the mother and the baby boy sat on its shelf.
Tara wrinkled her nose. “Who’s that?”
“It’s a stock photo, came with the frame.”
Tar
a looked around the room, from the bed to the dresser, and finally back to the corner with its bizarre accumulation of objects. She stroked the head of the pink puppy and reached her hand toward the mobile before letting it drop. “So it’s true.”
“What is?”
“This room. I thought it was a rumor, made up because of this town’s fascination with Vern and Dottie’s lives. But it’s actually here.”
It was the same thing Nell’s mom had implied. That this room existed as a shrine.
“What had you heard?”
“You know, that they couldn’t let go of their daughter’s death and had this kind of…creepy thing. But what I don’t get is, why put up a fake photo of this woman and baby? Whose Homecoming court ribbon and diploma? Whose flowers? It’s weird.”
Casey had to agree. The Dailys didn’t have any other children, and she hadn’t seen any sign they were in touch with extended family. In this whole search she’d seen nothing incriminating, or even informative. How could people live in one place for so long and have so little to show for it except a collection of what they would have wanted for their daughter, had she survived?
Casey cast her eyes over the small accumulation of souvenirs. Was the Homecoming ribbon Dorothy’s, from her high school years? Was the diploma simply a fake, or had one of them altered an actual diploma to look like their dead daughter had graduated? And where had they gotten the dried flowers? It looked more like a bouquet than a Homecoming corsage. Their wedding, maybe?
Casey took a closer look.
Her heart missed a beat.
She pulled a flower from the middle of the bunch.
It was a faded red carnation with a bent stem, made to squirt water at unsuspecting victims.
Chapter Thirty-six
Casey stared at the fake flower in the palm of her hand.
“Oh,” Tara breathed.
“What’s going on?” Death appeared, half-dressed in black stretchy pants, t-shirt, and socks, as if caught getting into Reaper gear after a shower. Fortunately, all the private parts were covered, although Casey wasn’t sure what would actually show up there.