Death Climbs a Tree

by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  In the dim light inside the store, he had no trouble recognizing the man from Joan’s description. His drooping mustache as thin as his hair, Skirv stood behind an old-fashioned glass counter framed in oak. Incense burning on the counter didn’t succeed in disguising an illegal smell that didn’t interest him at the moment.

  “Help you?” Right size, and his eyes were brown.

  “Mr. Skirvin? Lieutenant Fred Lundquist.” He showed his shield.

  Skirv tensed but stood his ground, his hands spread on the counter.

  “Andrew Spencer said you were good enough to rescue Sylvia Purcell’s belongings when he took her place.” Fred could see the man relax his guard ever so slightly. “Do you still have them?”

  “Sure. They’re in the back. I didn’t know what to do with them when I heard…” He called into a room behind a curtain that looked like one of his Indian bedspreads, “Paul, bring out that bag of stuff from the tree sitter.” Turning back to Fred, he said, “Poor girl. Did they ever find out who did it?”

  “We haven’t given up yet.”

  “I hope you get the bastard. I mean, she was helpless up there. No way to defend herself. How’s Andrew doing? He seems like a good kid.”

  “All right, far as I know.”

  “You know his mom manages the orchestra? That’s how I knew Sylvia, from the orchestra. God, it sounds awful to say knew.”

  “How close were you?”

  “We weren’t. But you had to respect what she was doing.”

  The bedspread curtain behind him opened, and a teenager even thinner than Skirv himself—his son?—appeared with a black plastic garbage bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Give it to him,” Skirv said, making no move to touch the bag. “Or better yet, why don’t you carry it out to his car?”

  “I left my car at the police station,” Fred said.

  “No problem,” Skirv said. “He can walk over there.”

  Damn, he’d hoped to see Skirv touch it. The man was bare-handed, even touching the glass counter, but Fred had no grounds on which to lift prints from the counter. Odds were good he’d used gloves when he brought the stuff back. It would have been perfectly natural.

  Fred looked around for something he might conceivably be interested in buying, something that would take a fingerprint. That glass paperweight over there, maybe, the globe with the miniature snowman and children inside. He peered at it.

  “You interested in something?” Skirv asked.

  “My mom collects those things,” he lied. “You shake it and it snows, right?”

  “Sure. Go ahead; try it.”

  Reaching for it, Fred managed to knock it off the table crammed with junk he knew his mother would never have in her house. “Sorry! I hope I didn’t break it.”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Skirv said. He leaned over the counter but made no attempt to pick the globe up.

  Fred bent down. “Guess not. Shook up the snow, though. How much you want for it?”

  “There’s a sticker on the bottom,” Skirv said helpfully, still keeping his hands to himself.

  Fred resigned himself to picking the thing up. Holding it by the edges of the bottom, he upended it. “Twenty bucks. That’s pretty steep.”

  Skirv shrugged. “There’s a market for those things.”

  “I suppose so, but I don’t think Mom would want me to pay that much. How about a glass vase? Or something crystal? She’s big on those things, too. She likes milk glass.”

  Skirv waved at the table the paperweight had come from. “What you see is what we’ve got.” The voice was friendly enough, but no way was Skirv going to hand sell anything to a cop. Meanwhile, young Paul stood holding Sylvia’s bag.

  Fred gave up. He’d have to send over someone whose demeanor didn’t scream cop. Jill Root in plainclothes could pass for an undergrad if Skirv didn’t know her, and she could probably pull it off, if she didn’t take Kevin along. Maybe Joan—Skirv obviously had no idea she was his wife. He could send Jill with her, to preserve the chain of evidence. At the moment, he thought, Skirv was looking very good for it. And Joan had put him out there on Sunday. With his guard down, he might just give them what they needed.

  “Thanks, anyway. And thanks for dealing with this. I’ll tell Sylvia’s sister.” He could smell the mildew through the bag. No wonder, closed up in there for days. Unlikely they’d find anything useful, but as soon as the boy left, he’d get someone to take it into the station. “Okay, son, let’s go.”

  19

  Some time later, Joan was thinking about Fred’s call. No question about it, he knew something. Asking how old Bert and Skirv were had to mean that he suspected someone in a particular age bracket. But why would that be the only thing he’d know about the man? He must be thinking of a man—he’d asked about Bert but not about his wife. Of course, she’d already told him about Bert’s temper. But why had he asked about Matt Skirvin? Did he think Skirv had some underhanded reason to take Sylvia’s things when Andrew went up the tree? Why would her killer want to be bothered with her stuff?

  She’d met Matt out at the woods the day Vint was killed. Was his visit to Andrew window dressing, an alibi, in case someone connected him to Vint? But if jealousy wasn’t his motive, why would he have it in for Sylvia and the DNR man?

  “Good job, partner!” At the bridge table, Ora congratulated Berta on making four hearts. “You saw right through them.”

  Joan smiled her own congratulations, but her thoughts kept racing.

  Had Sylvia seen something from her platform? Was that why she was killed? Was her killer afraid she’d left some evidence that could get him in trouble? If Skirv had killed her, he would have disposed of anything incriminating. A stone, maybe, if one had landed on the platform, and if he’d spotted it, of course. But if he was innocent, he might unwittingly have preserved evidence that would help find the man who had done it. She wished she could go along with Fred when he found out.

  Skirv had volunteered for Sylvia and then for Andrew. Had he done it to get close to them? So they wouldn’t notice him if he came near enough to hurt them?

  Looking out her office window, she watched Bert, who seemed to be doing a workmanlike job on the railings. Briefly, he stopped scraping rust to greet someone coming to the center. But when the person—Joan couldn’t see who it was—stayed to chat, Bert went back to work. He wasn’t slacking off. Maybe hiring him would work, at that.

  The door opened, and the person Bert had been talking to turned out to be Fred. Annie Jordan, still folding newsletters, greeted him. “She’s in her office—the door’s open. You making any progress on what happened to Sylvia Purcell, poor dear? We’ve all been talking about Herschel Vint, too.”

  “I’m glad to see you.” Joan raised her face for his kiss. “You came to look Bert over for yourself?”

  He closed the door. “That’s one reason.”

  “Whaddya think?”

  “Seems like a nice enough guy.”

  “You should have seen him a while ago.”

  “So you said. How about I take you out for an early lunch?”

  She looked at the clock. Not so early at that. “Why not? I’ll tell the cooks I’m not staying, after all.”

  He followed her out of the office, and she could hear him pumping Annie and Mabel about Herschel Vint. Not that they’d have much to tell him.

  Eventually, when they were outdoors and out of earshot, Fred came back to the subject of Bert.

  “Ask him to give you that can of paint he’s been using when it’s empty.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Tell him I need to keep track of what he’s used?”

  “You can come up with something better than that. And pick it up by the bail.”

  “It’s too small to have a bail.” They didn’t put wire handles on little cans.

  “Fine. Just keep your fingers off the sides.”

  She finally got it. “You want his fingerprints. But all kinds of people have handled it.”

/>   “That’s all right, as long as the prints on top are clear. We’re not trying to find out which prints are his.”

  “Then why bother?”

  “We’ve identified the prints we took from Vint’s car, and they match the partial prints on the stone you found. If we don’t find a match, I’m not going to worry much about Bert.”

  “If you’ve identified them, then you already know who it is. Am I missing something?”

  “We’ve never heard of this man. But he could be using a phony ID now, or maybe he did when he was picked up years ago.”

  “Don’t you have a picture?”

  “It’s damaged. No help at all. But you’ll be interested to know that he was arrested in Michigan, up north, and near Lake Michigan.”

  “So that’s why he’d have Petoskey stones. And use them so casually—he didn’t have to buy them in a rock shop.”

  “We don’t know how long he was there, but from the age they have on record up in Benzie County, he’d be forty by now.”

  It wasn’t much to go on. “And Bert looks like him?”

  “Right size, right age. Could be. So could your friend Skirv. He doesn’t know about you and me, does he?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Good.”

  She kept her mouth shut, but it wasn’t easy. They arrived at Wilma’s Café then and would have had to stop talking about the case anyway. Even in Fred’s favorite booth, where he could sit against the back wall and see everyone who came in, it was never safe to speak freely in a town the size of Oliver. The people they didn’t recognize were bound to be related to or friends of anyone they mentioned.

  She watched him scan the room, most of which was behind her. “You’d do better to bring Ketcham along,” she told him. “He knows everyone.”

  His eyes crinkled, melting her. “I’d rather look at you.”

  Wilma appeared at Joan’s elbow with a coffeepot and an order pad. She set the pot down on the table. “Hi, there. Take your order?”

  “My usual,” Fred said.

  She nodded.

  “What’s Fred having?” Joan asked.

  Wilma rattled it off. “Half-pound burger with fries, coffee, and apple pie à la mode.”

  Knowing Wilma’s juicy burgers, she was tempted, but thought better of it, even if she could have eaten all that. There was a lot more of Fred than of her to feed, and she hoped to keep it that way. “Give me a BLT on whole wheat toast, please, Wilma, light on the mayo. And coffee.”

  “Got it,” Wilma said, scribbling on the pad. She poured the coffee and disappeared. One of the reasons they’d have kept coming back even if Oliver had more restaurants was never to listen to specials of the day, much less to a kid in a bow tie say, “I’m Jeremy, and I’ll be your server today. What can I get you guys to drink while you look at the menu?” After which, of course, he would vanish.

  The food arrived in less time than Jeremy or Justin or whoever would have taken to bring them coffee. Joan’s BLT stood tall, and Fred’s burger with lettuce and slices of onion and tomato overlapped its huge sesame bun. He slathered mustard on it.

  They kept the conversation general over lunch, about the food and her lack of progress in finding another violinist in case the sub delivered before the concert. Fred was eating the last of his pie and Joan was finishing her second cup of coffee when she suddenly found herself trembling.

  “You think he’s all right?” She knew he wouldn’t think she meant Bert Barnhart.

  “Scared?” He reached across the table for her hand.

  She nodded. “For a while I’m fine, and then someone says something that sets me off. This morning Alvin Hannauer tried to pump me about what the police thought about the accident he read about in the paper, but of course I didn’t answer. From there it went to the construction people, EFF, and Sylvia, and someone said a young man had taken her place. The people who knew about Andrew shushed him. Bert’s tantrum broke in then, which was just as well, and I didn’t have time to think until just now.”

  “I can’t promise you anything, except that we’re working on it as hard as we can. I’d better get back to it.”

  “And I’d better go rescue that thing you want.” It didn’t feel natural to talk like this. She’d probably already said too much, but at least she’d kept her voice down.

  “I’ll walk you back.”

  “No. You go back to digging.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He took advantage of their back booth to kiss her hard before going up to pay the bill.

  She followed slowly, and they parted at the door. She shivered. Was it her imagination, from watching Fred eat ice cream with his pie, or was it from worrying about Andrew? Or had the temperature actually dropped? Walking briskly back to the center, she warmed up quickly.

  When she reached her office, three phone calls demanded her attention, and she made four more to find a substitute for the next day’s speaker, who had come down with the flu after the flu season was supposed to be over. Two hours later, she remembered to look for the paint can Bert had used. He’d left without replacing it in the basement. Probably empty. She had no idea which brush he’d used, but they all looked clean. He probably wiped it off when he cleaned it. But when she took the lid off the big trash can behind the building, it, too, was empty. Why did the trash pickup have to be early the one day she needed it to be late?

  She’d pick up a new can of the green in the morning. If she bought a gallon, there was no way he’d use it all on those railings. Fred would just have to wait. She went back in to call the paint store.

  The rest of the afternoon ran smoothly until less than an hour before closing time. Joan was already looking forward to her walk across the park when the phone shattered her peace.

  “Joan, it’s Alex. I need you to run out to Fulford for me.”

  “You what?” Several members of the orchestra worked at Fulford Electronics, true, but running errands was not part of her job description as orchestra manager. “Why me?”

  “I know it’s an imposition, but this would really help the concert. You know how deadly the narration to the Young Person’s Guide is.”

  She certainly did. And if adults thought so, what would children think? It had worried her all along.

  “That kid who plays the piccolo part to ‘Stars and Stripes’ on the tuba—”

  “Tory Isom,” Joan supplied.

  “Right, Tory. Well, he volunteered to pep up the words a little. I didn’t expect him to pull it off, but what he just brought me is better, I have to admit. I want you to take it to Jim Chandler, to give him time to read it before Wednesday night.”

  “Won’t you see him before then?”

  “Joan!” Alex was all wounded dignity. “I couldn’t throw myself at him like that!”

  No, you’d rather steal my time from me.

  “So you want me to come get it and then take it out to Fulford? Alex, I’m on foot.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind dropping it off to you. I’ll even give you a ride out there.” Alex, conciliatory?

  “Well…” She could walk home from Fulford.

  “Thank you! I’ll be right over.” As usual, she hung up before Joan could object further.

  She scarcely had time to ask Mabel Dunn to lock the building before she heard an imperious honk. Out in the parking lot, Alex was leaning on the horn of her Thunderbird.

  “Keep your shirt on,” Joan muttered, but she threw her bag over her shoulder and went out. When she slid into the passenger seat, Alex pulled out into traffic before Joan had finished fastening her belt.

  Annoyed at herself for agreeing to go, she looked at the manila envelope Alex tossed into her lap. “This is Tory’s narration?”

  “Yes. Take a look at it; see what you think.”

  She did and was impressed. Rough spots notwithstanding, the boy’s words were a considerable improvement on the original text. “I like it.”

  “Me, too. That’s why I wanted Jim to see it before he had to read i
t in public, even to the orchestra. He’s actually kind of shy, though you might not think so.”

  “No.” The man who’d made the speech to the orchestra on his first night had seemed anything but shy.

  At the edge of the parking lot, Alex pulled up. “I’m going to drop you here, all right?”

  Talk about an unlikely shy person. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You want me to wait?” Alex was clearly uneasy even to be that close to the building.

  “No, I can walk home from here.”

  “Thanks, Joan.” No sooner had the passenger door closed than the Thunderbird peeled off, firing bits of gravel that stung Joan’s legs and were probably going to leave holes in her hose.

  She tucked the new script in her shoulder bag and walked down the driveway to the front door.

  20

  Joan had never seen the inside of Fulford Electronics before, as often as she had driven past it. Only a rose on the receptionist’s desk rescued the inside from being as plain as the outside. But no one was sitting at the desk. Was she supposed to call out? Hit a bell somewhere? She didn’t see one.

  She’d give it a few minutes. Taking a seat in one of the plain black chairs that lined the wall, she looked again at the new narration. Compared to the stodgy stuff they’d been listening to, it was a breath of fresh air. No story line, like Peter and the Wolf, but you couldn’t have everything.

  “I’m so sorry. Did you have to wait long?” A trim gray-haired woman was smoothing her jacket as she hurried down the hall. Now Joan saw the word “Ladies” on the second door past the desk.

  “No, I just got here.” She stood. “I’m Joan Spencer, manager of the Oliver Civic Symphony. I have something for Mr. Chandler.”

  “We’re closing for the day, but you can go back and check. I think Jim’s still here. Sales is the third door on the right after you go through the double doors.” She pointed and then ducked behind her desk.

  Joan thanked her and headed down the long hall. As soon as she opened the double doors, she heard him. But the voice that had caressed the words he read to the orchestra had a sneer to it now.