by Janet Bolin
“Did you hear anything unusual early this morning, before the police siren? If I can call it a siren . . .”
I detected a hint of amusement on her solemn face. “I don’t think so.”
“Did you hear the ATV?”
She tilted her head. “Was that what woke us up? Then I heard Uncle Allen’s siren and figured he was looking after everything. I went back to sleep.”
I handed her a bill. “Are ATV’s a frequent problem down there on the trail?”
“I’ve never seen or heard them.” She gave me my change. “We have no complaints. We like it here in Elderberry Bay.” She gestured at the newspaper in my hand. “Whenever you need anything, come back. We’re renovating, so excuse the mess.”
The store was neat and clean, and the fruits and vegetables looked fresh and unblemished for mid-February. Promising that I’d shop there again, I said good-bye and went outside.
The pickup trucks were gone from the street in front of The Ironmonger. Sam’s buddies must have driven off. I deposited the newspaper on my front porch and went on to The Ironmonger, which was even dimmer than it had been a few minutes before. Sam appeared to be alone inside. He was probably about to turn out the last light for the evening.
It would be rude to barge in on him now.
If I found out that anyone had asked for a padlock like mine, I’d be able to give Uncle Allen the name of someone who could have unlocked my gate, someone who could have let Mike into my yard, someone who could have murdered him . . .
Sam’s door wasn’t locked.
Ever the gracious shopkeeper, Sam welcomed me. “What can I do ya for?” His teasing tone showed that he knew he’d skewed his syntax. “Those padlocks still working for you?”
Thank you for the opening, Sam. “Do you have any more sets that match those two, so I can buy another padlock without having to carry another key?” Weak, but it might do. I held my breath, watching him.
“Did you throw away your packages?”
“I’m afraid so. Do you remember the four digit number that was on those packages?” What I actually wanted to know was who might have memorized the four digits and bought a padlock like mine.
He frowned, tapped his fingers on the counter, rubbed his eyes, and came up with, “I think it had threes and sixes in it. And maybe sevens and twos.”
That left a few possibilities. And didn’t answer the questions in my hidden agenda. “Do you think anyone who helped you sort through those packages would remember?”
He opened a drawer, placed packaged padlocks on the counter, and conveniently asked me one of the questions I wanted to ask him. “Do you remember who all was here last evening?”
“The mailman and the mayor. I didn’t know the other men.”
Sam didn’t take that hint, just kept hauling out those packages.
I prompted, “Your regulars, maybe? Are the same men here every evening?”
“Pretty much.” In the semidarkness, his eyes seemed to twinkle, but maybe I only saw reflections from his stove’s dying fire. “I’m not sure those guys remember their own names from one day to the next.” He pushed plastic-wrapped packages around on his counter like toy cars. “They wouldn’t remember sorting through these, never mind a number.” He scratched his head. “Sometimes they don’t remember when to go home.”
Was he saying I should leave, too? I took another stab at my ill-planned interrogation. “Did anyone else buy padlocks after I did?” I felt myself blush. Padlocks, maybe he’d focus on padlocks, not keys, and wouldn’t guess where I was heading with my questions—who else could have a key to my padlocks?
No such luck. “Your gates were locked when Mike was found, weren’t they.” It wasn’t a question, and he said it gently. Just the same, I became acutely aware of the distance to the front door. A hardware store was, by definition, full of potential weapons that Sam the ironmonger would undoubtedly be skilled at wielding.
Courage, I told myself. Sam was at least eighty, and always kind and polite. He grabbed an armload of packages, carried them to the table where his friends had sorted through them, and dumped them on it.
I answered, “Yes, my gates were locked, so of course Uncle Allen thinks I let Mike into my yard. I didn’t, and I didn’t know Mike was there until the dogs barked and we went outside to investigate. Somebody besides me has a key.”
“And Uncle Allen suspects you of murder.” Again, it wasn’t a question. He came back to the counter for another load of padlocks.
I nodded, probably looking as wretched as I felt. I picked up the remaining packages and added them to the pile on the table beside the potbellied stove.
Sam frowned at the jumble of packaged locks as if something puzzled him. “Don’t you worry. No one could possibly believe that of you. Uncle Allen should be sitting around the stove here with the other old fogies instead of running around in that silly car of his playing cops and robbers, and I don’t mind if you tell him I said so. I’ve told him myself, often enough.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I wish I could say someone came in here wanting a padlock to match yours, but no one has. Still—” He broke off and walked back to his cash register. Tilting his head, he squinted at the table in front of the potbellied stove. “Weren’t there more packages of those things last evening?”
“I bought two.”
“Even so.” Fingers tight together, he polished his counter with the flat of his hand. “I wish I could remember for sure.”
So did I. “Did you hear or see anyone last night, like after midnight?”
“Nope. I wear earplugs to bed so my snoring won’t wake me up.”
Thanking him for his help, I started toward the door.
Sam called me back. “There were other people in the store besides you and my regulars, and any of them could have memorized that number and bought a matching set somewhere else.”
“How close are other hardware stores?”
“Nearly every small village has one. Bigger ones, too.”
Not exactly the helpful reply I’d been hoping for.
“Clay Fraser was here,” he said. “Betcha he’s in and out of hardware stores and the like all the time, being a contractor and all.”
Betcha he was. And betcha I didn’t want Clay to turn out to be a murderer. I needed him to build a dog pen and renovate Blueberry Cottage, and . . . maybe . . . No. I’d already decided that love at first sight should apply only to my wonderful store and delightful dogs. Not to a man.
“And those three girls, you know, the ones with the fabric stores and whatnot.” He nodded toward the shops across the street. “Not the young blonde. I don’t think she was here.”
No, Haylee hadn’t followed Clay and me into The Ironmonger last evening, but Edna, Opal, and Naomi, who would be girls to Sam, had. They weren’t murderers, either. None of them would let the others do anything outrageous.
“Mike’s cousin was here,” I said. “The guy in the bee-stinger stocking cap.”
Sam laughed. “Smythe Castor. He’s too much, that one. Always marched to a different beat, you know what I mean? Ever since he was a boy, everybody teased him, but did he care? Nope, it’s like he flaunts being unique, wearing funny hats and the like. No one can get a rise out of that guy. Betcha when his bees sting he doesn’t feel it. Not him. Not that guy.”
Wasn’t that the kind of person who could snap when least expected? My heart rate quickened. Maybe I’d found my villain.
“He’s coming back from Erie on Friday,” Sam said. “You can talk to him then. He’ll likely drop in here.”
“Erie?” Maybe I’d lost my villain.
“Yep. When he left here, he was headed straight for some conference. What was it called, now?”
“The Honey Makers’ Conference?”
“Yep, that’s it. He’s been gone ever since.”
Dejected, I tried one last question. “Do you know anyone around here who drives a black pickup truck?”
I could see him str
uggling not to laugh. “Just about everyone. It’s easier to think of who doesn’t. That contractor guy, Clay Fraser, for one, with his red truck. And Dawn Langford drives a red Valiant. I sold it to her. Sure do miss it.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I stopped driving ten years ago. If I can’t walk where I need to go, I can always find some kind soul to take me.”
Babbling that he could always count on me for a ride, I said my good-byes and went home, where I set the alarm for eleven forty-five and took a much-needed nap.
At five minutes to midnight, the dogs and I, all of us yawning, left In Stitches. Haylee’s shop was dark. Wearing all black, she slipped out her front door and joined us. We didn’t talk until we were in the car and I had steered quietly away from the shops on Lake Street.
Haylee directed me south of the village. “What did you learn tonight?”
“Uncle Allen hasn’t even called the state police for help,” I reported, disgusted. “And Dr. Wrinklesides doesn’t hear well, so Uncle Allen could have made up Mike’s last words.”
“No wonder he keeps changing them.”
“My neighbors at the General Store didn’t hear anything, except maybe that noisy ATV, before Uncle Allen’s siren. Sam didn’t hear anything.” I drove and drove. “How far away is it?” I asked.
“About ten miles from Elderberry Bay.”
“How could the zoning commissioner have lived so far away?”
“Elderberry Bay is the closest village, so our political boundaries include his farm and all the others out this way.”
“And Uncle Allen’s jurisdiction stretches all the way out here?”
“It should. There’s Mike’s driveway.”
I slowed.
Haylee leaned forward. “I don’t see any police tape or vehicles, but keep going.” She had me drive down a dirt road running along the east side of his acreage. “Let’s make certain no one’s parked on the track cutting in from this road, either.”
No one was. I stopped the car. “Shall we go back to the driveway?”
“Can you drive on this track without getting stuck?”
“Probably, since the ground is frozen. My tires shouldn’t leave prints, either.” I eased the car onto the track. The dogs must have sensed my nervous excitement. They sat up on the backseat and panted.
I found a place to park out of sight of the road.
Haylee told me, “Mike said people use this spot as a lovers’ lane. He liked to hide in the woods and scare them by firing a rifle at the trees above them.”
“I wonder if he ever ‘accidentally’ hit one of their cars.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
We got out and leashed the dogs. Haylee shined a pocket-sized flashlight at the ground. Dogs straining at their leashes, we followed the trail. It emerged from the woods, then ran between the woods and a south-facing hill where tiny grapevines inched toward wires strung between posts. Mike’s straggling, struggling vineyard.
The trail branched off, part of it staying alongside the vineyard. Haylee pointed at the section that turned into the woods. “We’re getting close,” she whispered.
The woods ended close to Mike’s back porch. She snapped off her light.
There was no sign of yellow police tape.
And Mike’s back door was standing wide open.
11
I WHISPERED, “LET’S GO HOME.” THE DOGS didn’t bark or growl, but anyone inside Mike’s house might hear their panting or the jingling of their collars and tags.
Haylee leaned forward in that stubborn stance I remembered from when we went to our office after midnight to sort through Jasper’s files. “Let’s watch and listen.”
We did, for agonizing minutes. The dogs lay down as if planning to snooze. Holding up a hand to signal we should stay behind, Haylee left us. Tally wanted to go with her, but I kept a firm grip on his leash. Bent over out of sight of windows, Haylee crept to the front of the house, turned the corner, and disappeared. Tally whimpered. I knelt and hugged both dogs.
Haylee reappeared around the other side of the house, ran back to us, and spoke in a normal voice. “There’s no sign of anyone or any vehicles in his driveway, either, except Mike’s truck.”
“Maybe we should call Uncle Allen.”
“To do what?”
I gestured at the back door. “Check out why this door is open.”
“And how would we explain seeing it?”
She had me.
“I’m going in,” she said. “You and the dogs can warn me if . . .” Without waiting for my reply, she was gone, through that open doorway. I had dressed warmly, but shivered, anyway.
She was back in minutes. She held up her hands. “I kept my gloves on and didn’t move a thing. But someone has obviously searched the place.”
“Uncle Allen?”
“This is more like a ransacking. But guess what?”
I was afraid she’d say she’d found a body. “What?” I faltered.
“Whoever was searching seemed most interested in Mike’s filing cabinet. Follow the money! That’s something we can do.” She didn’t have to crow about it. “Let’s go.”
I wanted to take the dogs inside with us but didn’t know what sort of ruckus they might cause. I tied them to a clothes pole and followed Haylee inside. Despite the open door, the house was warm. The furnace fan whined like it was straining to keep up with the cold air blowing in the back door.
Old bank books were heaped on the rug in Mike’s office. Haylee laid the flashlight on the edge of Mike’s desk chair. We sat on the floor next to it. Clumsy with our gloves on, straining to see in the gloom, we paged through bank books.
I found a deposit for almost two hundred thousand dollars about a year ago. Pulse pounding, I showed it to Haylee. “What crop might he have been selling in December?”
“Maybe he was paid late for it, whatever it was. But I got the definite impression he hadn’t harvested anything for ten or so years, since he decided to switch to growing grapes.”
“An inheritance?” I guessed.
“Maybe.”
We checked more bank books. Most of the time, Mike’s income had been small, a few deposits here and there, none of them very large. Outside, my dogs grunted and playgrowled while their collars clinked and clashed. They were having one of their usual tussles. I went out to be sure they weren’t tangled in their leashes. They were fine. I patted them and told them we’d be finished soon and to lie still and stay. They flopped down, panting, tongues lolling, tired and happy, so I reluctantly went back into Mike’s silent house.
“Pay dirt,” Haylee exclaimed. “Well, sort of. Ten years before that big deposit you found, Mike made an earlier one, about a hundred thousand dollars. In December, also.”
We could find only two years of banking history before that. Those years, he had made more or less regular deposits during the harvest season and had not deposited much during the rest of the year. “Typical for farming,” Haylee said.
“When did his parents die?” I asked.
She gazed off into the distance. “They died in a plane crash on their way home from a vacation, shortly before these bank books started, about two years before that first large deposit. Those amounts could have been from inheritances, if the wills took a long time to settle.”
“Did he have other property that he might have sold?”
“Not that I know of, and if he had information like that, it’s gone.” She picked up a folder labeled Deeds. It was empty. So was one called Sales.
I flipped through one of the recent bank books. “Uncle Allen said he had debts and mortgages, but I don’t see any regular repayments, do you?”
Haylee pondered another bank book. “None. Do you suppose he received government grants or subsidies?”
Maybe that explained the two large deposits.
Outside, Tally whimpered, the sound he made when he was separated from me for too long. I heard a vehicle out on the highway. “We’d better go,” I urged.
>
Haylee jumped up. “I don’t want to be found in this mess.”
We carefully tiptoed over scattered papers and outside to the dogs, waiting where I’d told them to. Of course they had to announce to the entire countryside that we were with them again.
I shushed them, detached their leashes from Mike’s clothes pole, and we all hurried back through the woodland trail. I half expected to find Uncle Allen, perhaps accompanied by the entire Erie detachment of the Pennsylvania State Police, waiting for us beside my car. No one was there.
We scrambled into the car. I sped down Mike’s lane, back to the dirt road, and finally back to Shore Road. Haylee reminded me, “We solved a crime before with the help of financial records. We can do it again.”
I pointed out, “But that crime was a financial one . . .”
She grinned. “Yeah, and we investigated the criminal and the extent of his crimes that time, not the victim.”
“It complicates things, doesn’t it, not knowing who the villain is?”
“Sure does.”
I parked the car where it had been before the night’s excursion. Silently, we tiptoed up the hill to our shops and waved good-bye to each other.
Back in our apartment, exhaustion carried me off while the dogs were still stomping their beds into nests.
When we went out to the front yard in the morning, I was careful not to peer under bushes. If the unlucky person who spotted a murder victim was going to be accused of doing the foul deed, I would have to work hard at never finding another one.
For all I knew, though, victims could be piling up in my backyard, giving a whole new meaning to the words “crime scene” on the yellow plastic tape woven through my fence.
I took the dogs inside, closed them into the apartment, and set out cookies and cider. The phone rang. I pounced on it. “I’ve got good news for you,” Trooper Smallwood said in her gentle, girlish voice. “We’ve convinced Detective DeGlazier to accept our assistance.”
Uncle Allen was a detective? Trooper Smallwood took my address and ended the call.
To inspire potential customers, I had embroidered lots of garments to wear in my store. Today’s was a fleece vest featuring an embroidered spray of elderberries in honor of Elderberry Bay. The morning’s students admired the design, one of my computerized originals, of course. They practically jumped up and down with excitement when I showed them the range of commercial designs they could try during the lesson, and if they ever wanted to, could buy. Several had great difficulty deciding whether to embroider something cute for a grandchild or sophisticated for themselves. Many personalized their motifs with initials or names.