An Anniversary to Die For

by Valerie Wolzien

  “Please sit down.”

  “I’d love to. What a wonderful room!”

  “Thank you. Except for our bedrooms, this is the only part of the house that is truly private—and the only part I feel I can really call my own.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” Susan said, noticing the singular pronoun. “Is it part of the original inn?”

  Constance smiled. “No. I never admit this publicly, but the oldest parts of the inn are the most uncomfortable. This room was added right after World War Two. I’m told the tiles around the fireplace were brought back illegally from occupied Germany.”

  “Really?” Susan moved to get a closer look. “They look as though they’ve been here forever.”

  “That’s part of the art of owning an inn like this one. We—and some excellent local craftsmen—have worked very hard to make everything look as though it’s been around since 1779, when the original inn was built here.”

  “How much is original?”

  “About half of the main building and most of the foundation. Of course, much of the rest has been restored to resemble how the building looked immediately after the Revolutionary War.”

  “You’ve done a wonderful job.”

  Constance shrugged. “We usually tell guests that it’s a labor of love, but to be honest, it can be something of a bore. Around ten years ago I spent a week at an inn in Carmel, California. It was a brand-new building sitting right by the water. It had every bit as much charm as our place—more, in fact—but every time there’s a minor plumbing problem at that inn, the owners won’t be forced to spend a fortune cutting through lathe, plaster, and worm-eaten wood. I think of that inn every time a guest here blows a fuse or a pipe in the attic freezes.”

  “Then you don’t get away much?”

  “It’s difficult, but that isn’t what you wanted to speak with me about. I believe you said something about the murder.”

  “Yes, of course. You see, I wasn’t questioned by the police.”

  “I should consider that a sign of good luck on your part. Surely you don’t want to be questioned by the police? Or . . . ?” She stopped speaking and pursed her lips.

  “Or what?”

  Constance smiled slowly. “You must know what everyone says about you and murder.”

  “I know that your sister believes murders happen when I’m around. She apparently thinks I cause them to happen.”

  Constance waved a manicured hand in the air, apparently dismissing this thought. “My sister has these romantic fantasies. Perhaps I don’t listen to her as carefully as I ought. But I can assure you that I don’t believe Mrs. Marks was killed here because you were giving a party. I assume that a clever person saw an opportunity to kill Mrs. Marks while everyone was busy elsewhere and took advantage of it. The party could have been given by anyone, it seems to me.”

  Susan smiled. “Yes, that’s what I think. But, to be honest, this is not what interests me right now. You see, the police—the local police—never interviewed me,” she explained again.

  “And you think they should have done so?”

  “Well, I found the body. That is, my husband and I did. And she was my next-door neighbor.”

  “Of course. I had heard there was a close personal connection between the two families.”

  “Well, there really isn’t. I mean, they moved in less than a year ago, and I’m afraid we . . . well, we weren’t close.” Why, she wondered, did she keep feeling as though she had done something wrong by admitting this?

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I thought perhaps you might know something. There is something I’ve been wondering about.”

  “Maybe I can help,” Susan offered eagerly.

  “Why did he stay with her?”

  “You want to know why Doug stayed with Ashley?”

  “Yes. I mean, she was poisoning him.”

  “That was never proven,” Susan pointed out, sitting back in the comfortable chair and getting ready for a nice long chat on the subject.

  “Apparently the police botched the investigation.”

  Susan was quick to defend Brett and his men. “I don’t think you can know that. According to my . . . my sources, the prosecutor went to court without preparing the case properly.”

  “Court . . . I . . .” Susan was surprised by Constance’s laugh. “Oh, you’re talking about this last time. I’m talking about earlier. Back when the Markses were living on the family farm.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought . . . of course, I don’t believe it for a moment, but I’d heard that Signe was supposed to have poisoned her mother.”

  “Heavens, no. That girl was just a child. Everyone knew that the problem in that house was the mother. Everyone in town knew.”

  “Really?” Susan leaned forward, hoping the other woman would continue.

  But the movement apparently distracted Constance Twigg. She shook her head and laughed a bit self-consciously. “I’m sorry. It’s all gossip. Ancient gossip, if you will. I know you’ll excuse me for not passing it on.”

  “Of course, but sometimes there’s a kernel of truth . . .”

  “And sometimes not.” For Constance Twigg that apparently ended the subject. “But I brought you in here for a reason, Mrs. Henshaw.”

  “What?”

  “I really must ask you not to speak openly about your friend’s murder in the inn.”

  “But—”

  “Quite simply, it is not good for business. No one wants to sleep in a bed where a corpse has lain.” She grimaced and corrected herself. “No one normal wants to, anyway. You would be shocked by the perverted requests we have been subjected to in the last few days.”

  Now that was something interesting! “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Damn, that seemed to close the subject for Constance Twigg. Susan had been hoping for some salacious details. “I’m sorry if we were overheard. I certainly didn’t mean to upset anyone. Ah . . . were you forced to throw away the mattress in our room?”

  “No, we certainly were not. Ashley Marks was not the first person to die in this inn, and she won’t be the last. Our guests are given immaculate rooms, which they enjoy during their stay with us. They do not need to be given details of everything that happened in the room prior to their arrival. Don’t you agree?”

  “I . . . I guess.” The truth was that she had never thought of this before. Had other people died in that room? That bed? And how had they died? But apparently she was not going to be allowed to ask any other questions. Constance Twigg stood up and turned off the CD player. “I am needed to greet guests this afternoon. My sister has chosen this inconvenient moment to take some time off. And you, of course, have your guest waiting in the restaurant, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. And we’ll be careful what we speak about.”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  Susan left the room, feeling that she had been dismissed. It was unfortunate that Alvena Twigg wasn’t available. Susan suspected she would have learned much more talking with her than with her sister.

  Jinx was waiting in the restaurant. “I asked for a table separate from the other diners so we wouldn’t have to worry about being overheard,” she explained, stirring cream into her iced coffee. “I haven’t ordered yet, but I was out late last night, and frankly I need the caffeine.”

  “But did you learn anything?” Susan got straight to the point.

  “Besides the fact that the Oxford Democrat has one sexy editor?”

  “Jinx! Is that why you’re sleepy today?”

  “We were out late last night. We went to dinner and then just started talking and forgot the time.”

  Susan grinned. “Sounds very romantic.”

  “Not really. Well, not what I always think of as romantic. Not wine and candlelight. More tea and fortune cookies. We went to a Chinese restaurant.”

  “Good food?”

  “Only okay.”

  “It was the company that made it special.”

&nbs
p; “Yes, and that company is going to pick me up here in less than an hour, so we’d better get a move on if we want to talk privately.”

  “Does this mean another dinner date?”

  “This means that while Sam Redman is a sweetheart, his newspaper’s files are a mess. You would not believe the work it takes to find anything. I’m having a terrible time resisting trying to organize him.”

  “Men don’t like that,” Susan said, picking up the menu.

  A smile spread across Jinx’s face. “I know. So, what are you going to have to eat?”

  “Green gazpacho and the avocado salad with grilled shrimp. I’m told it’s excellent.”

  Jinx tossed aside the menu. “Then I’ll have the same. Where is the waiter?”

  By the time the food had arrived, the two women had caught up on their personal lives and Jinx was ready to start reporting what she had learned. She started with Peter Konowitz because he was easy to talk about. “I learned next to nothing,” she said. “I mean, I know he was born in the area, went to school here, started in the local police department, traveled from department to department, and then returned to his old hometown as chief of police about three weeks ago. That’s his bio. That’s it. Sam says most of the crime around is petty and there isn’t a whole lot of police news.” She shrugged. “It sort of fills a column here and there between school events and the 4-H Club.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I’m in the middle of learning a whole lot about the Markses. And I think there’s some information about accusations of murder while they were living on what is always referred to as the family farm.”

  Susan bit a shrimp off her fork and leaned forward. “Really?” she muttered, chewing.

  “I don’t have all the details yet. I thought I could work forward from the beginning, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. Sam turned the sixties and seventies files over to a group of high school students who were doing a project on the history of team sports in the country. I don’t know how their research went, but they put nothing back where they found it. Sam promised to spend the morning trying to get things in order, but I don’t think organizational skills are his forte, frankly.”

  Susan speared a tempting chunk of avocado and wondered how important organizational skills were to Jinx when she was considering a romantic entanglement. “So what have you learned?”

  “Well, first the Markses—Doug’s parents—were very important people in this area. Their farm was huge and one of the largest growers of tobacco in the state. They also bred Jersey cows and were major milk producers. This, Sam pointed out, made them not only important people in the farming community, but important employers. Sam says that if Doug had stayed in the area, he would have been a very important man.”

  “Really?”

  “Why are you surprised?”

  “Doug has never struck me that way. Of course, the more I learn about Doug, the more I realize I’ve never really known him at all.”

  “Well, I’ve been reading about him for the last twenty-four hours, and I don’t know that much.” Jinx put down her fork and looked up at Susan. “But I do know one thing. He’s either a very unlucky man or else someone’s been trying to kill him for decades.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “WHAT?”

  “Let me give you a little background on the family first. It won’t take long.”

  “Okay.” Susan glanced down at her watch. “Just as long as you finish before Sam gets here.”

  “I will. I don’t know that much yet. As far as I can tell, there have been Markses in the area almost as long as this inn’s been around. I actually found an article about the history of the family. Doug’s great-great-grandfather was a member of the local militia during the Revolutionary War. And his great-uncle led a company from Oxford Landing at the Battle of Gettysburg.”

  “Sounds like Doug’s affection for guns may be a family trait.” Susan poured artificial sweetener into her iced coffee.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Go on. I don’t suppose the Oxford Democrat owns a copy machine?”

  “No. But I’ve got a pile of papers ready to go to Kinko’s.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “Sure. Do you want me to go on?”

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Well, as I was saying, by the time the family got down to Doug’s parents, they were very important landowners around here. Doug is an only child, and my impression is that his minor achievements received a disproportionate amount of attention.”

  Susan smiled. “Are you saying Sam Redman can be influenced by the movers and shakers of Oxford Landing?”

  “No, I’m saying his father could be. Sam seemed to be mostly amused by the entire thing, to be honest.” Jinx looked up at Susan. “Do you want to hear more about this, or do you want to talk about Sam and me?”

  “I’d rather talk about you and Sam, but that’s not what we’re here for. Go on. I’ll stop interrupting.”

  “You’d better, or we’re not going to get done. Well, the paper recorded all the ordinary things: Doug and his heifer calf at the county fair were featured on the front page in August when he was eleven or twelve. And his various science projects in high school. But those might have been featured because he won, not because of his family. Doug actually won the state science fair two years in a row.”

  “Clean water?”

  Jinx looked up from her food, surprised. “Yes, how did you know?”

  “He’s apparently become an international authority on the subject.”

  “Well, he got an early start. But he went to college in California, and there’s a break of four years when, except for a few announcements about his mother’s circle meetings at the Presbyterian church, the Markses weren’t mentioned much. Then, of course, there was the wedding.”

  Susan leaned forward. “Whose wedding?”

  “Ashley and Doug’s.”

  “Of course. Did they meet in California?”

  “No. Ashley grew up here. In Oxford Landing. You didn’t know that?”

  “No. It wasn’t mentioned in the paper.”

  “Well, of course she didn’t get the same press attention as Doug did.”

  “Does that mean she isn’t from an important family?”

  “Definitely not. The only thing I know about her background came from their wedding announcement. You know how those things are—at least, how they were thirty years ago. Most of the emphasis was put on the bride.”

  “And what did you learn about Ashley?”

  “Her father and mother ran the Texaco station out on the highway. I asked Sam if it’s still there, and he said he thinks it’s become that big truck stop. He vaguely remembers when it was known as Hurley’s Texaco.”

  “I gather Ashley was Ashley Hurley before her marriage?”

  “Nope. Ann Hurley—not even an e on the end of Ann. Apparently she changed her name after she got married.”

  “So Doug and Ashley grew up together. I had no idea.”

  “I don’t know how together they were when they were growing up. Doug had just completed his second year in a Ph.D. program at Stanford the spring before their wedding. Ashley had her high school degree and had been studying acting in New York City, according to their wedding announcement There was no mention of any professional acting school.”

  “So she could have been doing almost anything at all in the city.”

  “Yes, but with her looks, she could have gotten some small jobs here and there.”

  “She was good-looking?”

  “You should see her bridal photo. I don’t remember her at your party, but when she was young, she was beautiful. In a rather conventional way.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. Ashley was a very attractive woman. Very well groomed and benefiting, maybe, from a bit of plastic surgery. But you could say that about lots of women in their fifties.”

  “That’s true.” Jinx pushed her hair off her forehead. “I’ve been thinking of havi
ng my eyes done myself.”

  “Hmm.” Susan didn’t respond. She knew that women of a certain age—as she and Jinx were—could talk about this subject for hours on end, and she had other things on her mind now. “Well, I don’t know about Ashley when she was young, but she’s nothing spectacular now.”

  “And, apparently, neither well educated nor particularly affluent.”

  “And Doug was both.”

  Jinx nodded. “It sounds like it.”

  “According to Signe they didn’t live around here after their marriage.”

  “No, the paper didn’t mention much. There was a society reporter in the fifties and sixties, but Sam thought the column she wrote caused a lot of hard feelings. So when she retired, he didn’t replace her. But in the early sixties photos began to appear of Signe—she was in a play that her Girl Scout troop took to nursing homes in the area, things like that.”

  “No mention of her parents?”

  “Nope. Well, I don’t think so. As I said, it’s difficult to locate all the issues from that period.”

  “So you didn’t find information about the first reports of poisoning.”

  “Yes. And no.”

  “No?”

  “I didn’t see anything that was published about it in the newspaper, but Sam knows a lot—a whole lot—about it. That’s what . . . well, that’s one of the things we were talking about last night.”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  “It upsets him to talk about it. I hated to upset him.”

  “Jinx!”

  “Look, I’ll try to explain, although to tell the truth, I hate to—but you’ll understand about that when I finish. I’ll try to start at the beginning.”

  “Good idea.”

  Jinx took a deep breath and began. “Sam used to date one of the nurses who worked in the emergency room of the local hospital. And he says she told him about the poisoning first. To begin with, he says, everyone thought it was just a rather odd accident.”

  “Why odd?”

  “Because it happened to people who lived on the farm but who didn’t actually work in the fields.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “I didn’t understand that, either, but Sam says that’s because I didn’t grow up in a farm community. Remember, a lot of the regulations concerning insecticides are fairly recent. Farmers used to use many more dangerous chemicals than they do now. And farmworkers, mostly migrant workers, frequently came down with baffling illnesses that doctors assumed had to do with the chemicals they were exposed to. But apparently everyone was surprised when Doug and Ashley became ill.”