“Why’d you do it then?”
“I’m a nurse. I took early retirement a couple years back. Someone had to do it, and my brother and sister certainly weren’t about to volunteer. No matter how ornery Uncle Vic was, he was family, and you take care of family.”
I wondered if I could do the same. “Did anyone know about the trust before the will was revealed?”
“No one but Victor and, I suppose, his lawyer. We were shocked when we got the news. Sam was particularly upset.”
“Oh?”
“He made some claim that Victor planned to leave money to Martin College in the Lepcheck name. I was with Uncle Vic the most, and he never mentioned any gift to the college to me.”
“Did Victor ever mention his will when you were with him?”
“No. Never. I’m not surprised he left the money to his dog. He dearly loved that dog.”
“Tell me about Zach. How old is he?”
Debra peered through her binoculars into the nude canopy. Only a handful of hardy oak leaves clung to the skeleton-like branches. “I’d say he’s ten, maybe eleven. He was already an adult when Uncle Vic brought him home. My uncle was an animal lover. He always had a dog, but he particularly liked Zach. Probably because the pooch loved him even though Uncle Vic was a grumpy old curmudgeon. That dog adored Victor. He slept at the foot of his bed every night.” She made a notation on her list. “House finch.”
“Zach came from the Hands and Paws Animal Shelter?”
“If you say so. I don’t know where Vic adopted Zach from.” She shrugged. “I was afraid when Victor passed, Zach would be depressed, and he was for the first couple of months. I do have to admit Tess took good care of the dog. She took him a lot of places with her, including her co-op. It helped Zach to be out and about. He’s a very social animal and didn’t get to see many people when Uncle Vic was ill. I’m sure he still misses that old dodger though.” She turned her binoculars to the right. “Cardinal, female.” She marked her list. “How many birds have you counted?”
I looked down at my uncheckmarked list. Would it be wrong to count the female cardinal on my list as well? Cardinals were everyday occurrences in Ohio. It wasn’t like inflating a bird count for an endangered species, was it? I wondered.
Before I could make up my mind, Debra took the clipboard from my hand and shook her head. “I think we should do less talking and more looking.” She handed the clipboard back to me.
“One more question. Tess’s first husband was killed by a hit-and-run driver?”
Debra let go of her binoculars for the first time, allowing them to hang from her neck. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what that has to do with my uncle, his dog, or my sister’s murder.”
“I don’t know, either,” I admitted. “I can’t even imagine what Derek is going through. He’s awfully young to have so much tragedy in his life.”
“There is no minimum age for loss,” Debra said in a knowing voice. She lifted the binoculars back up to her eyes. “The whole family was devastated by Seth’s death. Tess the most, it goes without saying. Her first husband was a good match for her. He was smart and had an excellent head for figures. His left brain balanced out her right brain. She was the one who wanted to adopt Derek, but it was Seth’s organization that made it happen. He was a much better fit for her than Jerry, if you don’t mind me saying. Tess and Jerry were too much alike. Two scatterbrained artists under one roof is a recipe for disaster if you ask me.”
The sky began to brighten from gray to a dusty bluish pink. The trees were no longer just gray statues. The greens, browns, reds, and oranges shone on their rough bark and resilient leaves. Maybe I would come here another day in the morning with my paints and easel.
“He was an accountant,” Debra said, interrupting my thoughts.
“Oh?”
“Yes. In fact, he was Victor’s accountant. He helped him with his investments, that sort of thing. We have Seth to thank for Victor’s large estate.” She paused and marked her list. “See? There’s a goldfinch. He should have made his way south by now, poor thing. I hope there’s nothing wrong with him, making him miss the trip. Although with climate change, more and more birds aren’t making their annual migrations south anymore. It’s a real shame. You can see robins in January around here. It wasn’t always that way.”
I wanted to bring Debra back on track. “Seth worked for Victor?”
“Didn’t I just say that?” she asked.
The dawn was bright enough that we no longer needed our flashlights to see the path. I clicked mine off.
“Psst! Psst!”
“Is that some kind of bird call?” I asked, looking up into the trees.
Debra looked around. “That’s no bird.”
“Psst!”
I looked behind me, and the path was empty. “Where’s Ina?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Ina!” I called. The park wasn’t that big nor the forest so thick that we were cut off from civilization. At most, Debra and I stood a quarter mile from the parking lot, and the sound of traffic was clearly audible. It would only take a minute to run to the road, flag down a car, and throw together a search party. What was I thinking? My cell phone was in my pocket. I’d just call Mains, and he’d have the police department mobilized within minutes.
“Shhh!” Ina’s head peeked out from behind a bush.
“Where have you been?” I demanded a little more harshly than I intended. I would never admit it to her, but she gave me a fright.
“Follow me,” she whispered and disappeared back behind the bush. Debra followed her through the shrubbery faster than I would have thought possible, and I found myself alone on the path. I hurried after them.
When I stepped out from the bush, Ina and Debra stood beneath a denuded sycamore tree with their necks bent back, looking straight up.
“Shhh!” They both looked at me with a finger to their lips.
“What is it?” I hissed.
Debra pointed up. I looked up. Way up at the very top of the tree was a large blob. It had to be a bird, but it was huge. It was much larger than the red-tailed hawks that so commonly perch on power lines in town. I lifted the binoculars to my eyes. It was a bald eagle. My breath caught. I’d seen a bald eagle in the wild many times, but never in my hometown of Stripling.
“The Cuyahoga River isn’t far from here,” Debra said, her voice barely above a whisper and answering my unspoken question. “He was probably scouting it out for fish.”
“Does it live here?” I asked.
Debra shook her head. “I think he’s one of the pair that lives in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It’s only ten miles from here by car, a lot closer by how an eagle flies.”
I agreed. Suddenly, the huge raptor spread his wings and took off. We followed it with our three sets of binoculars, tracking it until it was out of sight.
I was glowing from the bald eagle sighting when I walked onto the practice football field two hours later, rolling my blue cart of paintings behind me. It was Sunday, and Ina had gone to church, so she wasn’t playing my Watsonesque wingman this morning. I’d usually be there myself, sinking into my pew as my mother told yet another embarrassing story about me, my family, or both from the pulpit. She says we make excellent sermon illustrations, but I’m convinced she just likes to see us squirm. Because of the festival, I’d gotten a pass that Sunday morning. Well, if not a pass, at least a believable excuse.
My glow faded when I saw Jerry there setting up his booth for the day. Jerry tested the heat of his blowtorch against an iron hook.
David walked over and stood beside me. “He said he couldn’t stand being at home or at his forge any longer,” he said as if reading my mind.
I bit my lip. I wondered if I would have the strength to entertain the public after losing someone as close to me as Jerry had. I doubted it. I doubted it a lot.
David patted my shoulder. “I’ll be sure to stop by your booth later to see your work. Who knows, maybe
we can find a place for you at the co-op.”
Tess’s place, he meant.
I was setting up my booth for the day when Celeste and the two other beaders arrived. The trio chatted away until Jerry came into view. Celeste dropped her bags by the beader booth and ran over to him. Jerry, who was hanging iron kitchen hooks on a large Pegboard, grimaced. They were on the other side of the field from me, so I couldn’t hear their exchange. I meandered in their direction, trying my best to look inconspicuous.
“I don’t need your help.” Jerry’s tone was gruff.
Celeste was crestfallen. “I—I’m sorry.”
“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?” Jerry snarled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the one who killed her.”
Celeste’s mouth fell open.
The whoosh of a prairie skirt grazing the grass came from behind me. I turned to see Beth approaching at a fast trot. “Celeste, we need help setting up the booth.”
Jendy was a few steps behind Beth, twisting the hem of her pioneer skirt.
With tears in her eyes, Celeste kicked the ground. A tuft of grass bounced off Jerry’s cart. “No, I didn’t like her. She stole you from me.”
“I never belonged to you, not like I belonged to Tess.” Jerry turned his back to her and resumed hanging hooks.
Celeste stumbled into the arms of her fellow beaders as if he’d slapped her. She threw her companions aside and fled. Jendy went after her, and I slunk back to my booth.
Fifteen minutes later, Jendy returned without Celeste. She and Beth held a whispered conversation in their booth.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Jendy’s purple hair peeked out from under her mobcap. “Yes, everything’s fine.”
They went back to whispering.
Later that morning, I folded dollar bills into my fanny pack from my most recent face painting, a Frankenstein’s head on a seven-year-old’s cheek. It was the last day of the festival, and with all things considered, it had been a success. The festival had attracted a record turnout. The question was if that was because people wanted to learn the history of their town and buy some crafts from local artisans or if they came in hopes of seeing a crime scene. Either way, Carmen was pleased. When she stopped by my booth later that morning to tell me the good news, she didn’t even yell at me for not wearing my pink gingham nightmare.
During the lull in the crowd, I called Lew.
“Have you found a kennel?” I asked.
There was a hoarse sigh on the other end of the line.
“Lew.”
“I knew I’d rue the day I gave you my cell number.”
“Did you find a kennel for Zach or not?”
Instead of answering, he yelled into my ear. “Careful with that. It’s worth more than you make in a year.”
“Ouch,” I complained.
“My apologies. I’m dealing with a pack of butterfingers here.”
“Where are you?”
“Victor’s house. Your provost’s lawyer dropped by my office yesterday. He requested a full inventory of Victor’s possessions before the estate can be settled.”
“Wasn’t that done after Victor’s death?”
“It was.” I heard him take a pull from a cigarette. “What a nightmare.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There are some small but very expensive pieces missing from the house.”
“Were they there during the first inventory?”
“Yes, I’m positive. We took digital pictures.” Lew groaned.
“What’s missing?”
“Valuable coins, small medals, and a few antiques.”
“Sounds like a lot. Tess was in charge of the trust. Maybe she sold some of these items.”
“She’d better not have. The trust said nothing could be sold or removed from the house by Tess until after Zach’s death. The trust was very specific on that point. Victor wasn’t going to let anyone out of caring for his dog.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Someone stole from the estate and fenced the antiques.”
“Was everything missing photographed?”
“You’re thinking whoever took the items used the photographs as a key to what was valuable?”
“Makes sense.”
He sighed. “I already thought the same thing. It has to be an inside job. The items stolen were too specific, and all were photographed for the last audit. Unfortunately, a lot of people knew about those photographs: the auditors, photographers, lawyers, and family members. We are talking thirty people plus.”
“Yes, but who had access to them to note their value?”
“I don’t know if the auditors and photographers kept copies, but I imagine they did. Also Sam Lepcheck and his lawyer each got copies. I gave copies to Debra Wagtail as a courtesy. Tess had copies of course, because she was ultimately responsible for the items.”
“Which means her husband and son had access to the photographs, too.”
“Probably,” he agreed.
“Where is the house? Is it secure or easy to break into?”
“It’s a huge gray Victorian not far from the square.”
“Lew, there are at least six gray Victorians in and around the square. Be more specific.”
“It’s five-four-five Roland Street.”
“Roland Street?” I paused. “We used to say that house was haunted when we were kids.”
If I remembered correctly, the house in question was a massive affair with a turret and huge front porch. It was regularly the target of middle school pranks, which amounted to toilet papering and sometimes even egging. Not that I had ever done either of those delinquent misdemeanors, or at least I’d never gotten caught. I didn’t know where the haunted story came from, but it was just accepted as fact by kids growing up in Stripling. Could it be because Victor was an elderly man living all alone in that big house? I hadn’t known whose house it was when I’d tossed my rolls of toilet paper into the trees as a part of seventh-grade initiation.
“It still might be. Anyway, the house is secure. There’s an alarm system, and it’s intact. No sign of forced entry. Your buddy Officer Knute is here. We called the cops when we discovered it was more than one or two items missing.”
“How will this affect Zach?” I felt my shoulder begin to ache, a sure sign of tension. It was doing that a lot lately.
“It might take longer to settle everything than I first thought.”
“You are trying to find him a kennel, aren’t you?”
“I’m still working on it. It’s not just a matter of finding the kennel.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like this.”
“One of the stipulations of the trust states Zach cannot be in a kennel for any extended period of time. I’m sure Victor built this in to keep his family members from stowing the dog somewhere, then spending its money. I have it with a judge right now because of the extenuating circumstances, but she’s yet to make a ruling.”
“What is an extended period of time?”
“According to the trust, no more than four hours.”
“Four hours.” I ground my teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Lew inhaled in my ear. “Can’t say I remembered the stipulation at the time.”
“What kind of trust did you write for Victor anyway? Could you’ve made it any harder?”
His voice took on an edge. “I write what my clients ask me to write. I can advise them, but they don’t have to listen to me. Trust me, Victor never did.”
“You have to make other arrangements for Zach. He and my cat are at war. Right now, he’s with my parents.”
Lew groaned. “They didn’t take him to a peace march, did they?”
“No, but I can’t promise they won’t. You’ve got to take him.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll put some pressure on the judge and maybe get an answer soon.” His tone was dubious.
“I
want those answers today, Lew. Or I’m dropping Zach on your doorstep.”
Lew laughed. He knew I would never do it. I was too much of a softie when it came to animals. I’d taken Mark’s troublesome cat Theodore in after all. Okay, Ina took him in, but I was the one who’d found him a good home.
Crash sounded through the phone receiver.
Lew grunted. “India, I have to go. Your friend Officer Knute is making a point to break all the antiques we have left.”
“What about Zach?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, clearly finished with our conversation. “In the meantime, don’t let your parents do anything drastic to him, like tie-dye his fur.” He disconnected before I could respond.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The crowd was pretty light as I mulled over my conversation with Lew. It was just after noon, and most of the festivalgoers had moseyed over to the food vendors for lunch. I realized this was my opportunity to question some of the crafters more thoroughly. I had one particular crafter in mind.
I told the beaders, who amounted to Jendy and Beth—Celeste had not returned after her run-in with Jerry that morning—I was going on a lunch run, and they agreed to watch my booth. On the way to AnnaMarie’s broom booth, I stopped and bought an elephant ear. It was part of my cover, so I felt obligated. I could have found a healthier lunch option at the festival, but in times of stress, sugar is always my go-to drug. I made a point of forgetting my pledge to eat healthier for the remainder of the festival.
A small cluster of people gathered around AnnaMarie’s booth as she stitched a broom with a needle as hard and thick as a roofing nail threaded with thick hemp-like twine. It was a round broom and clenched in an iron vise.
If she noticed me joining folks around the booth, she gave no indication. She tapped the uneven bristles of the broom, still covered in broomcorn seeds. “This is a hearth broom. It’s also known as a round broom. It’s called a hearth broom because women in pioneer days used it to clean out the hearth after cooking. When I finish sewing it together, I’ll cut the end with this blade.” She placed her hand on a contraption that looked like a medieval version of the library’s paper cutter. “The ends will be so even the broom will be able to stand on its bristles without falling over. If it can do that, it’s the sure sign you have a good handmade broom.” She picked up the round broom from the table next to the vise and stood it on end. The group applauded.
Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) Page 14