Opera House Ops: A Morelville Cozies Serial Mystery: Episode 9 - Twofer

by Anne Hagan

  “Oh no, I better go see what that was.” Lauren all but sprinted out of the room leaving the three women standing there staring at each other.

  “Seth loves her,” Doris hissed at them. “If you say anything to her, it will just break her heart!”

  The two women were silent as they went out to Faye’s car, got in and pulled out of the driveway of the Scott residence.

  “What the hell?” Chloe exclaimed as soon as they were clear.

  “I know. She was a blubbering mess not ten, fifteen minutes ago, then she follows us out here and she’s the picture of cool, calm and collected and wants to read us the riot act? Something just doesn’t add up.”

  “But what? What’s her angle?”

  “Maybe she knows where Seth is or knew all along what’s been going on. Who knows? My head’s just swimming with all of the possible reasons for her actions tonight. I mean, did she really even faint?”

  “She was pretty pale, Faye. I’d say that part, at least, was real.”

  “All along, I thought she had a thing for him. Maybe I was wrong about that.”

  They were both quiet, thinking for the couple of minutes it took them to drive back into town.

  Faye pulled up behind Chloe’s car which was still parked in front of Doris’s home. “We need to get out of here quick, in case she’s still in a following mood and she comes right back,” she said.

  “Do you want to head out to the farm and I’ll meet you out there?” Chloe asked. “I guess I feel like we need to put our heads together on this one.”

  Faye shook her head no. “I think we should just go to Mel now with what we know and go from there. I know Aiden said he’d talk with her tomorrow but he’s going to be tied up most of the day with Kara and her mess.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “I’ll head over there and park behind their barn in case Doris goes cruising around the village. You park in the driveway like you’re just visiting your daughter.”

  Chapter 3 – Guilty!

  7:28 PM, Wednesday, October 14th

  Dana stood at the window, watching for Hannah as she listened intently to Faye and her Mama telling Mel everything they knew.

  “Amanda Sellers or Amanda Scott, you said? Where are she and her brother originally from?” Mel asked her mother.

  “Kara’s from Philo, and she told me the first time we met that Gregory was from Duncan Falls. They’d been high school sweethearts who met back up in college.”

  “Where would that be?” Mel asked.

  “That I don’t know, but I’d almost bet somewhere in New York City or the state of New York,” Faye said. “Seth met both Sellers’ in college, the way Kara tells it, so I would presume their little group included her as well.”

  “She never mentioned herself as being a part of their group?”

  “Not exactly,” Chloe admitted. “Do you think it’s important?”

  “It could be,” Mel shrugged. “They’re all linked together but that’s a missing piece of the puzzle. I just think it’s strange that she came down here, even though Gregory was her ex, not blaming anyone for his death and not having mentioned anything about Seth Scott before, given that now she’s saying she saw him the first time she was here and that she’s known about this possible bigamy situation for a while. I’m just trying to put it all together in my head and that’s not making any sense.”

  Dana’s dog Boo pawed at Mel, wanting up in her lap. She bent slightly and picked up the little Boston terrier absently, as her mind whirled trying to see all the connections.

  “The last anyone knew of Seth Scott’s whereabouts, he was in Kentucky,” Mel said to the other women, as she recalled the record of the ATM transaction there.

  “Faye you said Amanda’s in Atlanta now, right? Could he have been headed there?” Dana asked.

  “It’s possible,” Mel answered instead, shrugging again. “From here, I wouldn’t go through Eastern Kentucky, myself. There are faster routes down to Georgia.”

  “Maybe he was trying to avoid the interstates,” Chloe said.

  Faye grunted. “So cloak and dagger. It just doesn’t seem like him or something he would do. I think, if he was headed to Atlanta, he’d just go.”

  Mel gave Boo a scratch behind the ears as she told them, “Well, regardless, it gives me something to work with. I’ll get in touch with the Atlanta PD and the Georgia State Police and have them looking out for his car, for starters.”

  “Hannah’s here,” Dana said from her spot in front of the sitting room window. “Looks like she’s loaded down.”

  Dana and Mel both went outside to help their younger friend as she attempted to get Jef, all of his toddler trappings and her school books out of her car. When everyone was back inside, Jef waddled right over to the two women he considered to be grandmothers and flirted mercilessly with them, vying for their attention.

  “How’d he do with Katie’s parents this time?” Dana asked.

  “Better,” Hannah said. “Thankfully, he’s warming up to being over there now that he’s more mobile and can explore a little.” She heaved a sigh of relief. The adjustment of her adopted son to his Amish maternal grandparents who had grandparents rights for visitation always weighed heavily for her.

  She turned to Mel. “Since I had to pick Jef up at the Hershberger’s, I came into the village the back way from their farm so I could stop at the bakery on the way to drop off my class binder and some other stuff I’m going to work on tomorrow, if the shop isn’t too busy. When I came by the opera house, that guy Kent’s truck was there. I could see a flashlight moving around the back of the building. The guy scares me a little so I didn’t bother to stop, after all.”

  “Just now?” Faye asked.

  Hannah nodded. “I didn’t go anywhere else, just came straight here instead of stopping at the bakery, like I said.”

  “I better go check it out then,” Mel replied. She was already headed to the closet in her bedroom where she kept her service weapon.

  Faye groaned when her daughter emerged strapped up with her full gun belt. “Please be careful,” she begged.

  “Always.”

  ###

  Mel coasted her pickup down the street, lights off, toward the opera house. Her attempt at stealth was for nothing. If Kent had been there, he appeared to be gone. There was no sign of his truck in front of the building or in the empty lot next door where the old body shop had previously stood.

  She parked in the empty lot and walked around the building looking for any signs of tampering but she found nothing. The back door was locked. The window on the left side she’d previously taped had been nailed shut by her father Jesse later and it remained well sealed. The only tracks in the dew on the grass around it were hers.

  ‘If he’s getting in there,’ she thought, ‘he must be coming from his empty lot and using a key in the back door.’

  She whirled away from the window and saw the slight movement of the blinds in the window of old man Howe’s trailer home across the expanse between the two structures. The blue flicker of light from a television seeped out around the edges of the blind.

  Leaving her truck parked on the other side of the building, Mel walked over there and knocked on the old man’s door.

  Calvin Howe didn’t waste time answering it. “Figured it was you, Sheriff,” he said, by way of greeting.

  “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “I suppose, but you’d better come on in.”

  She stepped just inside the door enough to close it behind her but she didn’t move any further. She could tell the old man was nervous about her being there at all and downright jittery about her being seen there.

  “I just want to talk to you about the opera house, if you don’t mind?”

  “Don’t know what I can tell you,” he said as he stood a few feet from her, shifting his weight back and forth on his heels. “Matter of fact, I don’t even know who owns it anymore.”

  “My concern is mo
re over what you may have seen going on around there.”

  She took note as he swallowed quickly and his eyes shifted away from her. He knew something that she was going to have to pull out of him.

  “Have you seen anyone over there at all during the day or maybe even creeping around at night trying to get into the place or maybe even just checking up on it?” She kept her tone light and quirked an eyebrow at him as she waited for his response.

  He shook his head no, slowly. “Can’t say that I have. I haven’t seen nothin’ or nobody.”

  Mel crossed her arms in front of her and leaned back a little. “Hmm, that’s too bad. My mom told me she talked to you before about keeping an eye out on the place, especially after those teenagers broke in there and found…well, you know. Anyway, I have to say, I’m disappointed you haven’t been doing that.”

  He cast his eyes down and then turned his head away and told her he was sorry that he hadn’t done it but Mel knew he was lying.

  She said, “It would be a shame to see anything happen to such a historical fixture in the village after all the community has been through over it, but it probably doesn’t matter anyway because Kent Gross is just going to tear it down and set a hotel down right there. There’ll be all the comings and goings of people that go to those sorts of foo foo places. He’ll probably even offer you a pittance for your place here so he can move it or dismantle it and have all of this property over here for parking and such.”

  His head shot up. “A hotel, you say? Land sakes, whatever for?”

  Mel just nodded, answering his first question but leaving the second up to his imagination.

  The color started to rise in his face. “My place ain’t for sale; not for a lowball offer or for any other offer for that matter.” He shook his head but kept eye contact with her now. “That guy you’re talking about, that Kent Gross; he gave me a little grocery money to keep quiet about anything I see going on over there and to mind my own business.”

  Calvin smirked. “Between him and Faye coming and talking to me though, every time I hear a car stop on the gravel out in front of that place, I just can’t help myself but to take a peek. Gross, he’s been there a couple of times, including tonight. Parks right in the front like he owns the place and goes around to the back. Spends maybe 5-10 minutes there. I’ll tell ya what though, I can’t really see what he’s doing over there and I’m thinkin’ I don’t really want to know.”

  “Have you ever seen anyone else over there?”

  Calvin pulled at his bottom lip for a few seconds then he admitted he had. “Two or three times I’ve seen that Blake Wagner fellow.”

  Mel tried to hide her surprise. “You’re sure it was him?”

  “Yep. I know him pretty well. His family’s been around here for a while and, besides, he worked on my old rabbit gun for me when I started having problems with it jamming.”

  “Do you remember when you’ve seen Blake over there?”

  “Naw. I didn’t actually keep track of nothin’. They don’t, either one of them, ever stay over there very long. I can’t even tell for sure that they’re going in the place. Looks like they might be just checking around outside it.

  She tried a different line of questioning. “Have you ever seen any women hanging around over there?”

  Howe scratched his head and gave that some thought. “One day,” he said, “back in the spring, it was like a parade of people going in and out of there. I’m pretty sure they had that back door open then.”

  “Who went in there? Did you recognize any of them?”

  “Well, let’s see,” he said as he tapped his chin with a finger. “There was a guy that pulled up outside there in a white sedan. He stood looking at the building for a couple of minutes then he walked around the side, on this side of it, to the back. Didn’t know him.”

  Mel figured that was probably Gregory Sellers. “Did you see the man you’re talking about leave the building later?”

  “Nope, didn’t. My daughter-in-law came and fetched me to run me to the eye doctor in Zanesville while at least a couple of them were still in there.”

  “The eye doctor? Are you having vision problems?”

  “No. Just a routine checkup. They dilated my eyes though and I knew they was goin’ too, that’s why she come over and took me.”

  “Did you recognize anyone else that went in that day?”

  “Uh huh.” He nodded vigorously. “That pastor from over at the Christian church was there and just a little bit later that secretary lady from there was too.”

  Mel was surprised but she tried not to let it show on her face. “Together?”

  “They didn’t show up together, if that’s what you’re asking. He drove up maybe a couple of minutes after the first man. She walked up later than that.”

  “That’s very interesting information. I really appreciate you sharing it with me.”

  “I ain’t done yet. Since I’m telling everything, I might as well tell you that there was one more person that showed up there that day too, another woman.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know her. She’s definitely not from around here but she’s been in town here since that day. In fact, I just saw her tonight passing by when I was out for my evening walk. I’d recognize that little Mercedes sports car she was driving anywhere.”

  ‘Kara Bradshaw!’ Mel thought. The hair stood up on her arms and the back of her neck.

  “She was here back in the spring? Are you sure?” Mel remembered Kara coming to town to lay claim to the building in August. She’d parked at the bakery then and her mom drove her down to the opera house Faye had told her she’d claimed she couldn’t find.

  “Yeah;” Howe said, “the day right before that guy died.”

  ‘So, at least four people were in that building that day and one of them didn’t come out alive,’ Mel shuddered as she thought.

  She asked Calvin, “So, what time was it when all of those folks were coming and going?”

  He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Late morning or early afternoon. My appointment was at 2:00, so my daughter-in-law picked me up about an hour before that.”

  “Were you watching out the window the night Gregory Sellers, the guy that died over there was found?”

  “The next night, wasn’t it?”

  Mel nodded.

  “Yeah…least when the police…when you showed up later on, but I didn’t see or hear anything before that. I was up at my son Cal Junior’s house. My grandson’s high school graduation was that night up there in Millersburg. I didn’t get back until late in the evening when all of it was coming to a head over there.”

  “You never said anything to me or any of my deputies about seeing all of those people going in and out the day before.” She fixated on his eyes with a pointed stare.

  He, in turn, looked sheepish. “I didn’t think nothin’ of it at the time, Sheriff. Honest! By the time I got back from the doctor that day, it was quiet over there and all those cars were gone. My eyes were burning even trying to look out. I went and laid down until the stuff they put in them to dilate them wore off.”

  “The man that died,” he asked, “was he the man that was drivin’ the white sedan or was it someone else that maybe showed up later on that day that died?”

  “I’m going to have to look into that,” she told him honestly. “Were either Kent Gross or Blake Wagner there the day you saw those other four people at the opera house?”

  “Naw; not that I saw before I left here, anyway.”

  “When did you last see Blake over there?”

  Howe worked his lips back and forth as he thought. “The only night I can remember for sure,” he said hesitantly, “was the night of the fire at the old body shop.”

  Mel wasn’t surprised at his newest revelation.

  Allowing a hint of gruffness into her voice, she asked him, “You didn’t think that was important to report either?”

  Calvin trembled a little.

  “Let me
guess,” Mel asked, “It was after Kent Gross paid you for your silence?”

  He hung his head but nodded all the same. “It was maybe a half hour or so before the shop fire got out of control. He was driving that thing he’s always riding around town on. Went right by here and the opera house but I heard it shut down just after that then start up again a few minutes later.”

  “Did he come back by here?”

  “No.”

  About the Author

  Anne Hagan is an East Central Ohio based government employee by day and author by night. She and her wife live in a tiny town that's even smaller than the Morelville of her Mystery fiction novels and they wouldn't have it any other way. Anne's wife grew up there and has always considered it home. Though it's an ultra-conservative rural community, they're surrounded there by family, longtime friends and many other wonderful people with open hearts and minds. They enjoy spending time with Anne's son and his wife, with their nieces and nephews and doing many of the things you've read about in her books or that will be 'fictitiously' incorporated into future Morelville Mysteries and Cozies series books. If you've read about a hobby or a sport in either series, they probably enjoy doing it themselves or someone very close to them does.

  Anne and her wife are the co-owners of a haunted house: Hagan's House of Horrors. Much as her dream has always been to write fiction, her spouse's dream has been to create it through the medium of horror. They took their haunt operation fully commercial in 2015. Watch them as they grow!

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