“Tom gave us a lift,” May said, nodding toward the retired rancher. He saluted Anna with his cup of coffee, and she gave him a weak smile.
“Any news?” she asked, turning back to May.
“Some. We got here at seven thirty just as Frank was opening. Steve turned up about twenty minutes later.”
“He looked worn out, poor boy,” Erna added. “He must have had quite a night.”
“Yeah, he was bushed. Anyway, he said that it looked like Henry hadn’t been dead too long when you found him, but they’ll have to wait for the autopsy to be sure. And there wasn’t much damage done to him, other than ‒ well, you know. Nothing to indicate he’d been in a fight, or tied up, or anything. So, it still looks like suicide.”
“Wouldn’t be too hard to imagine Henry getting himself murdered,” Mr. Andrews said. “There were times I wanted to get my hands around his throat myself.”
“Shame on you, Tom Andrews,” Erna said. “Speaking ill of the dead.”
He shrugged. “Hell, I’m not the only one who felt that way.”
“Just don’t say it out loud,” May whispered. “Not with the police as edgy as they are.”
“I’m not surprised,” Erna said. “One murder and another suspicious death all in the same year. That’s unprecedented in Crane history.”
“Hi, Anna,” Mary said, bustling around the counter to pick up a pot of coffee. With four tables occupied, another couple coming through the door, and no sign of Judy yet, she was in a hurry. “Looks like you’re getting all the news. Do you want the usual?”
“Please,” Anna said.
“Frank, Anna wants the usual,” Mary called through the pass-through before rushing away.
Anna turned back to Erna. “How was Frank when you showed up this morning? Did he still seem angry for calling the police on him the other night?”
“No, he said ‘Morning’ the same as usual.”
“Good. At least things are okay with Frank.” Anna turned to May. “How about Sherman? Have you heard from him?”
“Yeah. He’s a basket case. Thank God he’s staying with Father Winfield. Imagine how he would have felt opening his curtains this morning to discover Henry’s body swinging from a tree. If it had been me, I’d have had a stroke for sure.”
The door opened as another customer arrived.
“Now what are we going to do?” Anna asked.
“Nothing. It’s over,” a husky voice said from behind them. Anna whirled to see who had spoken. Tiernay stood just inside the door wearing the same cloak Anna had seen her in the night before. There was mascara smeared under her eyes and her hair was flattened. Most of her make-up was worn off, too. Anna had never seen the young woman looking so unglamorous before.
“I’ve been up all night taking readings around Sherman’s house and consulting the cards. Evelyn’s murderer is dead, and she’s finally at peace. I knew I’d find you all here this morning, so I came to tell you.”
“Do you mean that Henry killed Evelyn?” Anna asked.
“Yes, and now that he’s dead, the balance is restored. Evelyn can deal with Henry in the afterlife.” Greg pushed through the door behind her with his hair tousled and damp and his coat flapping open.
“There you are. I told you to wait for me.” He took his sister’s hand. “Come on, let’s go sit down and order some food. Morning, everyone,” he added, nodding to the group at the counter. Tiernay followed Greg to a table while Anna and her friends watched.
“Don’t look so worried, ladies. Didn’t you hear the young woman? Everything’s taken care of,” Mr. Andrews said with a chuckle. He picked up his coffee and ambled over to his usual table where the newspaper was open and waiting for him.
“I’m not so sure,” Anna said, leaning toward Erna and May. “Of course, I don’t believe that Evelyn’s ghost killed Henry, but we can’t be sure that his death was a suicide, either.”
“Morning everyone,” Judy said, pushing through the kitchen door with a sunny smile on her face. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? I sure slept well last night. Even slept in a little this morning.” Frank rang the bell, and she walked over to check the food orders while the three women glanced at each other.
“No way,” Anna whispered.
“I don’t know. Is she strong enough to lynch someone?” May asked. They watched Judy as she sauntered by with three heaping plates of food balanced on her arms and a coffee pot.
“Does it take strength? What if Judy had a gun?” Anna asked. “She might have forced Henry to climb up on a chair, and then kicked it out from under him.”
“What about motive?” May asked. “Why would Judy kill Henry?”
After considering for a moment, Erna whispered, “Well, Henry must have returned to Crane for a reason. What if it were to take revenge on Frank? It might have been Henry masquerading as Evelyn who threatened Judy with the axe. Frank might have discovered his ruse, and either one of them, or both, could have killed Henry in self-defence.”
The pass-through bell rang again. Anna glanced up quickly and caught Frank’s eye. He nodded at her before disappearing back into the kitchen.
“I don’t believe it,” Anna said. “If anything, Frank might have beaten Henry black-and-blue for coming after Judy, but I don’t believe Frank would have strung Henry up.”
Judy sauntered to the pass-through, picked up a plate of pancakes and bacon, and set it down before Anna. “I’ll get your apple juice,” she said, turning to retrieve the carton from the cooler. “You must be talking about Henry. Pretty shocking news, but I’m glad it’s finally over.” She placed the glass in front of Anna, pausing for a chat.
“Over? The police have just opened their investigation,” Erna said.
“Well, there is that, but I haven’t been able to sleep since that fruit loop tried to kill Frank two weeks ago. Now that I know Henry’s about to be buried six feet under, I’m sleeping like a baby. But I’ve got to go. Time for Mary’s break. Catch you later, ladies.” Judy winked, pulled a pencil from behind her ear, and hummed as she strolled away. May arched her eyebrows at Anna.
“Oh, come on, you’re not really thinking that either of them had anything to do with Henry’s death?” Anna asked.
“It’s all conjecture at this stage. We’re just toying with possibilities,” Erna replied. “We mustn’t let our emotions prevent us from examining the case from all angles.”
“Well, if we’re going to toy with possible suspects, I’ve thought of someone no one else has mentioned yet,” May said.
“Who?” Anna asked.
“Tiernay.”
“Tiernay? How do you figure that?” Anna said. “She hasn’t lived here long enough to murder Henry. She barely knew him.”
“Yeah, but just think,” May said. “She’s been worried about Evelyn’s ghost wanting revenge, right? And she thinks she was possessed. What if she thinks Evelyn told her to murder Henry, so she did?”
“That would mean . . .” Anna began.
“That Tiernay is seriously looney tunes, just like I said.”
“What are you three whispering about?” Judy asked, returning to the counter. The women jumped. “You look like a pack of magpies sitting on a wire. Anna, you haven’t even touched your food yet.”
Judy made another pot of coffee while Anna poured syrup over her pancakes and cut into them. Picking up the spare pot, Judy asked, “Can I get anyone a warmer?”
“Thanks,” May said, shoving her cup forward. They sat in silence as Judy refilled May and Erna’s coffees before strolling away with another order.
“We’re too conspicuous here,” Anna murmured. Peering nonchalantly over her shoulder, she glanced around the restaurant. Greg was watching her with a frown on his face and a slice of toast mid-way to his mouth. He put it down and nodded at her, and Anna smiled before returning to her plate.
“Look, we’re wasting time,” she said in a low voice. “We don’t know anything for sure. We’ve got to get some solid facts bef
ore we can come up with a theory. I’m going to start by returning to Sherman’s house to have a look around in broad daylight. If I see anything interesting, I’ll stop by your house on the way home to tell you.” She nabbed a fat forkful of pancake and chewed vigorously while fumbling for her wallet.
“Good idea,” Erna said. “But call May’s store if you have anything to report. May and I are dropping by to see if anyone wants to talk about Henry’s murder. We still don’t know where he hid when he came back to town. Maybe someone saw him.”
“That’s right. We’ve got to retrace his steps,” May added. “We’ll ask Gerry for a lift back to Erna’s when we’re done.”
“Good, looks like we’ve all got something worthwhile to investigate,” Anna said, plunking money down on the counter and snatching up two strips of bacon from her plate. “See you later,” she added, saluting her friends with the bacon as she made a beeline for the door.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Anna had company when she arrived at the caretaker’s house, however; a cruiser was parked out front, and John was sitting on the porch steps, wearing a pair of sunglasses. She waved at him from the sidewalk, and he beckoned for her to join him. Stepping over the crime scene tape, Anna trotted across the lawn, noticing that the leaves had been removed.
“Have a seat,” John said when she reached him. She climbed up the steps and sat down beside him. John was still in uniform with his hat pushed back on his forehead and his tie loosened inside his jacket. With his eyes hidden by the glasses and his face expressionless, Anna wasn’t sure if she were intruding.
“You been here all night?” she asked.
“No, I just came back an hour ago. The forensics unit finally packed up and left, and I wanted to have a look at the place in daylight. What are you doing here?”
“Same thing.” She looked over at the tree that Henry had been hanging from and shivered, pulling her feet onto a higher step and hugging her knees. Even with the blue sky and sunshine, it was hard to get the picture of Henry’s body hanging from the tree out of her mind.
John glanced at her. “Cold, or does this place give you the creeps?”
“Both.” Anna frowned. “Turning around and seeing Henry’s body swinging there was one of the scariest moments of my life. And I’ve had a few.”
John nodded. “Dead bodies take some getting used to.”
“I don’t ever plan to get used to them,” she said. He smiled at her small joke, and Anna relaxed a little. “So, since I’m here, do you mind my asking what the forensics team discovered?”
“Kind of hard for them to find anything with all the leaves. Sherman wasn’t keeping up with the raking, so our team had to bag a lot of them to sift through later. It will be a while before they can make a report.”
“I see,” Anna said. “How about the time of death, then? When did Henry actually die?”
“We won’t know until after the autopsy,” John replied, taking off his hat and rubbing the red mark on his forehead.
“Hmm. Well, how about the sign around Henry’s neck? ‘MURDERER.’ What do you make of that?”
“Hard to say. Could mean a lot of things.”
“That’s fair,” Anna said, flicking a piece of lint from her pant leg. She wasn’t getting anywhere using the direct approach, so she decided to try a different tack. “You know, Erna and May were just saying that Henry seemed to disappear right after he attacked Frank at The Diner. You guys never found him afterward, right?” John nodded, watching a crow fly over the street. “Pretty clever of him, don’t you think? I mean, if it were me, I’d probably have panicked and driven straight to Calgary. Probably would have got picked up for speeding. You found his car ‒ what ‒ two days later?” John nodded again, his face still inscrutable. “So, where do you think Henry was before he turned himself in?”
“That’s currently under investigation.”
Anna frowned and folded her arms over her chest. “I’m beginning to catch your drift here, John. You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?” John frowned, slapped his hat back on his head, and rose wearily to his feet.
“Death is about as serious as it gets in a police investigation, Anna. I heard about your involvement with your ex-husband’s case. I don’t want it happening again here. You can pass that information along to Miss Dombrosky and May, too.” He nodded and climbed down the steps, headed for his car.
Anna jumped up and followed him, kicking at the leaves when she reached the boulevard. “Last time was different,” she said to his back. “I was the prime suspect. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.”
“Okay,” he said, leaning against the cruiser, “what’s your excuse for sticking your nose in this time?”
“I found Henry’s body, so I have a stake in this. Besides, I’ve been involved ever since the first séance. All May, Erna, and I want is to help Sherman.”
John studied her for a moment before saying, “I wouldn’t worry too much about helping Sherman if I were you.”
“Why?” she asked, suddenly worried.
John shook his head, climbed into his car, and shut the door. The engine started up, and he powered down the window. “See you around, Anna,” he called, waving before pulling away from the curb.
Anna stared after him, her lips pressed together, wondering just what he meant by his comment. Why shouldn’t she help Sherman? Did John think Sherman was involved with Henry’s death, or was he referring to the counterfeit money issue? After a moment of unfruitful contemplation, however, she decided to ignore the comment and have a look at the tree.
The rope was gone from around the trunk, of course, but she could see where it had scored the bark. Leaning her hand against it, she peered up into the branches. That was the limb Henry had been hanging from, right? Or was it the one beside it? Anna sighed. Some sleuth she was. She couldn’t even remember an important detail like that.
She circled around the tree, her eyes searching the ground. The grass was brown and damp from its recent blanket of leaves, but she couldn’t see any marks on it. What had the forensics team seen? She sighed. She didn’t have any forensics training, so she couldn’t read the crime scene from a scientific point of view. What she needed was a different angle, something more intuitive. She closed her eyes and tried to picture Henry standing under the tree. What had he been feeling last night?
She remembered how angry he had looked when he stormed into The Diner two Saturdays ago. She had never seen Henry like that before. Sure, he’d been a complainer, always ready to bend your ear with his latest injustice, but she’d never thought of him as the violent type. The way he’d shoved Judy into the cash register was so unlike him. And trying to stab Frank! Well, it was obvious he’d been deranged. Yet somehow he had managed to evade the police for two days until disappearing into Calgary, and then he’d vanished again after his friend had bailed him out of jail. How long had he been back in Crane before he died, and where had he been hiding?
He wouldn’t have risked staying at his house, no matter how cold it got at night. If a neighbour had spotted him, it would have been all over. Maybe he’d lived rough, hiding in different garden sheds or garages to stay out of sight. Poor Henry, he had always been so fastidious; she couldn’t imagine him surviving without clean clothes and a daily shower.
Maybe someone had helped him ‒ but who? Prior to the attack, she might have imagined Frank or even Erna helping him, but no one afterward.
Still, he must have foraged in someone’s garage for the stuff to make the sign. A piece of cardboard, a brush, some paint, and a piece of string to hang the sign around his neck. And the rope. She mustn’t forget the rope.
Okay, time to concentrate. After making the sign, he’d come here to kill himself. But why here? If “MURDERER” was an accusation against Frank, why hadn’t he hanged himself on Frank’s lawn? Or, even more poetic, in front of The Diner, since he blamed Frank’s business for ruining him. Dying here on Sherman’s lawn just didn’t make sense.<
br />
Wait a minute! Anna stared up at the tree again. How had Henry got up there? He certainly wasn’t the athletic type. There was no way he could have climbed the tree, especially carrying a rope and the sign. He’d have needed a ladder for sure. And she and Ben would have seen it if there’d been one propped up against the tree or kicked over onto the ground. For heaven’s sake, they’d have fallen over it in the dark!
Anna shook her head. She should have thought of that before, but the shock of finding Henry’s body must have affected her thinking. Okay, there was no ladder, so it seemed highly improbable that Henry had committed suicide. He had been murdered.
She frowned. It was easy for her to imagine poor Henry standing here on a chair, trembling, waiting for his murderer to kick it out from under him. Now came the hard part: imagining the face of the murderer.
Well, they had just shared all kinds of theories at the restaurant. Personally, she didn’t believe that Tiernay was the murderer. She might be vain and selfish, and she might have a grossly exaggerated belief in her own abilities, but she wasn’t criminally insane. And Frank or Judy just couldn’t have killed Henry. They might be capable of killing in self-defence in the heat of the moment, but not in cold blood, and not by lynching.
So, she was back to Sherman again. Her gut told her that he was still the best bet. If Sherman had got it into his head that Henry had killed Evelyn, then killing him here and labelling him a murderer made a lot of sense, at least to someone mentally unstable. And despite what Erna thought, Anna still considered Sherman to be mentally and emotionally unstable.
She kicked at a tree root. She and her friends hadn’t done him any favours, had they? They should never have let Tiernay mess with his head, not when he was already delusional about his wife calling to him from beyond the grave. But guilt would have to wait until her next visit to the confessional. For now, what mattered was protecting her friends from Sherman.
Her mind made up that Sherman was the most likely suspect, Anna strode across the lawn, heading toward Erna’s house. It was time for a talk. She had to convince Erna and May that Henry hadn’t committed suicide, and ‒ and what?
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