Murder Actually

by Stephanie McCarthy

  It’s always a ditch. Mom must’ve watched some news program about a girl in a ditch, because that’s where her bodies invariably landed.

  “I wish I’d known you were coming, you could’ve stayed here.”

  She shook her head. “We aren’t staying, we’re on our way to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Do you want to come with us? You might meet someone there.”

  I considered the strange, single men who might hang out in baseball museums and shook my head. “It’s a tempting offer, but I have to work.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve always said you’ll meet someone when you least expect it; the museum might be your big chance. Here,” she thrust a gift bag into my arms, “I brought you a present.”

  I eyed the bag apprehensively. My mom bought most of her gifts from Skymall. I saw my anxiety wasn’t misplaced as I pulled out a 1X T-shirt which read, Ask Me About My Romance Novel.

  “Thanks, Mom. It’s…nice.”

  “I knew you’d like it. You don’t already have one, do you? Good. This way everyone will know you’re a writer and don’t just spend your days lying around watching trash on television.”

  “Is that what they think?”

  She ignored me and opened the pet carrier at her feet. “C’mon out, Sweetums.”

  ‘Sweetums’ was mom’s Aberdeen terrier, who suffered from ‘glandular problems’. The malevolent expression in his eyes belied his name.

  “He looks hungry.” I glanced down nervously at my ankles.

  “I’ll get him a nibble in a bit.”

  Sweetums started sniffing around the fireplace and I noticed Blue saunter in through his cat door. He stopped when he saw the interloper, and they exchanged a look of deep hatred before Blue leapt at him with a yowl.

  “Keep away! Elspeth, get your cat!”

  “It’s his house, Mom. What can I do?”

  “Grab him!”

  “Not a chance.”

  Sweetums used the diversion provided by our interchange to make his escape through the kitty door, with Blue in hot pursuit.

  Mom sighed and sank back on the sofa. “It might’ve been a mistake to bring Sweetums with us, but don’t tell your dad I said so.”

  “I won’t.”

  She leaned forward suddenly and stared at me. I felt like I was sixteen again and trying to smuggle beer down the basement stairs.

  “Are you getting back together with Grant?”

  I nearly fell out of my chair. “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Julia’s blog.”

  I sat back. Damn Julia!

  Julia Berry was the biggest blogger mouth in All Hallows. Her blog site, Oh Yes She Did!, read like a stream of consciousness novel. I just felt lucky she hadn’t mentioned…

  “Or is it this new guy? The one Julia calls ‘Mr. Poe’.

  “It’s neither, or at least, it’s neither yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “Please don’t get your hopes up.”

  “My hopes? What do my hopes and dreams have to do with anything? It’s you we’re talking about, and I would suggest you think long and hard before you get back with Grant. Remember how miserable you were those last few months? I do. It was awful. And then when you lost the baby…”

  I held up my hand. “I’m not getting back with Grant. Can we please change the subject?”

  She sighed. “I need a drink. Do you have any wine open?”

  “I have a box of wine open.”

  She gently laid a hand on my arm. “Do you need some money?”

  “No! Boxed wine has come a long way; it’s not shameful anymore. You should give it a chance.”

  “I’m too old to start economizing. If you have a cup of decaf that would be just fine.”

  “Is instant okay?”

  I backed away from the expression on her face and held up my hands. “I’m joking. I haven’t sunk that far…yet. I have a Keurig.”

  “Excellent. Make sure it’s decaf, I don’t want to get the jitters.”

  I brewed the cup and we stood in the kitchen, silently contemplating my new t-shirt.

  “This Mr. Poe…does he have a real name?”

  “Edgar.”

  She set down her cup. “Really, Elspeth, if you don’t want to tell me you can just say so.”

  “I’m serious. His first name is Edgar and his middle name is Allen but his last name isn’t Poe. It’s Archer.”

  “Archer,” she let it roll around on her tongue speculatively, as if she were trying an exotic new wine. “Is he any relation to the Archer family that used to stay here in All Hallows?”

  “He might be,” I said cautiously. “He said his family used to vacation here.”

  Mom sat forward and snapped her fingers. “I bet he’s Olivia Archer’s son. Now, there’s a story you could put in one of your books!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Olivia Archer killed her first husband.”

  “Mom!”

  “What? Everyone knows she killed him, it’s not like it’s a big secret. Besides, he really had it coming. The man was a notorious gigolo.”

  “Why do you say she killed him?”

  Mom set down her coffee impatiently. “Because she did, Elspeth. She poisoned him. Of course, there was an inquest, but the police could never find anything connecting her with the crime. Of course, it helped that the medical examiner was her future husband. They got married a few years later and I heard they moved back to the city. Can’t say I blamed her. There was so much talk in the village.”

  I sat back, flabbergasted. Could it be true? I glanced over at Mom, calmly drinking her decaf.

  “If there was no evidence connecting her with the death why would you say she killed him?” I asked.

  “For heaven’s sake, Elspeth, I don’t know. I’m not the police, am I? All I know is she killed him. You should ask her how she got away with it.”

  “Was Chief Liddell around then?”

  She smiled. “Billy Liddell? Is he still in All Hallows?”

  I nodded and her smile got bigger. “He was around back then, but he wasn’t the chief. He was just a fresh-faced sergeant and so cute in his uniform! My friends and I used to have quite a thing for Billy. Billy the Tongue, that’s what we called him.”

  “Yuck! Mom, seriously, Chief Liddell!”

  “It was a long time ago, Elspeth. Then I met your father and we got married and moved away. It’s water under the bridge.”

  Everyone kept saying that. I wondered why it made me so uneasy.

  Chapter 25

  I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache. Thanks to my mom my dreams had centered around the sinister Olivia Archer, who had appeared as the Queen of Hearts and hosted a tea party. More, tea, dear? I watched the thin stream from the teapot change from brown to green before waking in a cold sweat.

  “Damn it, Mom.” I muttered.

  I was beginning to think that maybe murdering cheating husbands was just something people did in the country, like using the kitchen door or keeping pets outside. Blue gave a little mew of displeasure as I threw back our warm covers, but I’d arranged to meet Julia and there was just enough time to grab my notebook before I headed downtown. I met her at the Sweet Annie B’s Tea Room and told her about my meetings with Rose and Sabrina.

  She listened in silence and then shook her head. “I’ll never feel the same about Hotel du Lac. Poor Anita Brookner must be rolling over in her grave right now.”

  “I think she’s still alive.”

  “Even worse! Thankfully, she’ll never find out. I won’t put it on my blog.”

  “Speaking of blogging,” I said “I have a bone to pick with you. Mom visited yesterday and she told me that…”

  Julia glanced down at her watch and gave an exclamation of feigned surprise. “Omigo
sh! Look at the time. We have to get going, Betts. I have a meet and greet at ten and can’t be late.”

  I resolved to confront her later about her online disclosures and followed her into the Gazette office.

  Missy Conger, Crispin’s intern, looked up impatiently. She was in the middle of painting her nails a particularly repellant shade of purple and apparently didn’t see any reason to stop. I didn’t blame her. Julia and I didn’t look like paying customers.

  “How are you, Missy?” I asked.

  “Not good,” she returned shortly. “They’re closing down the paper. Crispin was in debt and there’s no money to pay anyone else to run it.”

  I sat down without asking and Julia followed suit. “Do you know anything about Crispin’s financial situation?”

  She shook her head. “No, but he had a lot of meetings in the past six months. Lots of closed-door, why-don’t-you-take-the-afternoon-off type stuff. He was always disappearing around lunchtime and then he wouldn’t be back in the office until four. Word on the street was he had a gambling problem.”

  “Do you know if he was planning to sell the Gazette?”

  She snorted. “Who would want this old paper? It’s just a bunch of crap about kids and senior citizens. Most people get their news online anyway. Newspapers are obsolete.”

  As a panderer of the printed word, I found her assessment rather bleak. “Did Crispin seem nervous or upset the last couple of days?”

  She shook her head again. “He was his usual nitpicking self.”

  “Did he mention anything about any pictures he’d taken recently?”

  “Not to me. The only thing he told me was to quit spending so much time on-line. What else am I supposed to do? It’s like a tomb in here.”

  “Did Crispin tell ever mention any future plans for the paper?”

  “He just told me not to worry, he said he had a plan that would take care of everything.” She glared at us. “Just like my ex-boyfriend; telling me he’ll take care of it and then leaving me to clean up the mess.”

  She followed my gaze to the corner where the body had been and nodded grimly. “Yes, I had to clean up the whole office. Who else was going to do it? I couldn’t believe the state of things when the police finally let me back in here. Crispin always kept it really tidy.”

  I could believe it as I remembered Crispin’s fussy attention to detail. “Did he have any enemies, Missy?”

  She shook her head. “A couple people behind on their paper payments and a feud with Professor Chandler over the correct spelling of ‘bellwether’. Nothing too dramatic.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “And you didn’t notice anything unusual about him?

  “He seemed a bit preoccupied. But everyone is these days with the economy so bad.”

  I spread my hands in front of me in a gesture of appeal. “Missy, we’re trying to figure out who could’ve done this. Maybe you could help.”

  She glanced up from her nails. “Sure, as long as it won’t take too long. Like I said, I’m busy with my job search.”

  I assured her we’d be brief. “Did Crispin take all the photographs for the Gazette himself?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t trust me to do anything around here but run errands and make him coffee. Like I don’t know how to take a picture!”

  “Did he take his pictures somewhere to get them developed?”

  “Oh, yeah, he took them to Pym’s Drug. Crispin wasn’t a photographer and the pictures in the Gazette weren’t the greatest.”

  I remembered my own grainy photograph from the book reading article and nodded. “Did he have one particular camera he would use?”

  “Well, he had a couple of them. He went through memory cards really fast; you’d be surprised at all the local crap we have to cover. Anyway, he kept them in his desk drawer and kept it locked.”

  “Are they still there?”

  She shook her head. “Nope, the police took them earlier this morning. I guess they wanted to look through the photographs. Not much to see, though. Crispin was getting his next article ready for the series on the Bracebridge Festival.”

  “Did he ever take his photographs home with him?”

  She nodded. “He worked from home on Fridays.”

  “Was he working from home last Friday?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  I thought for a newspaper assistant, she was decidedly incurious. “Can I get his home address?”

  Missy reluctantly wrote it down and handed it to me.

  “Did Crispin ever mention Jasper Ware?”

  Missy blushed and giggled. “Dirty old man!”

  I was surprised. “Did you know Jasper Ware?”

  “Oh, yeah, he’d been coming down her a lot lately. He asked me how I’d like a promotion to reporter. I told him Crispin would never promote me, and he said if I played my cards right I might get lucky. I told him that would be great and then he goes and gets himself killed. Nice timing, huh?”

  She sat back, clearly disgusted by Jasper’s inconsideration with regard to her career advancement.

  “Did Crispin ever mention why Jasper was here?” Julia asked.

  Missy shook her head. “He just said Jasper was thinking about going into business with him. What business, I wanted to ask. Our subscriptions are at their lowest level in three years.”

  “Why did you stay?”

  She blew on her nails and then started a second coat. “What other jobs are there in this town? I’m trying to get through community college and I can’t really afford to be choosy.”

  “Missy, if you think of anything else, can you give me a call?”

  I wrote down my cell number for her and then Julia and I walked back outside. I stood for a moment watching the foot traffic along High Street as Julia reached into her bag.

  “I’m going to order us some business cards, Elspeth. You can’t keep scrawling your number on old receipts like some bar fly.”

  “You might want to get some money from an actual client before you do that.”

  She beamed. “I forgot to tell you! Nora gave us a thousand dollars for our client trust fund.”

  I regarded her skeptically. “Do we have one?”

  “We do now. Marshall Spright set it up for us. Our official balance is $925.”

  I raised a brow and she flushed. “I have to eat, Betts! And detecting is hard work; I needed to find the perfect shoes. See?”

  She pointed at her feet and I noticed she had on a new pair of pink Skechers. “They’re perfect for solving crimes. Next I’ll order our business cards; I bet I can find something really cute online. Do you want pink or green? Never mind, I’ll surprise you!”

  I was certain she would.

  “Let’s drive over to Crispin’s place,” I suggested. “Missy said he worked from home on Fridays. Maybe we can find some clues there.”

  Crispin lived on the outskirts of All Hallows in a subdivision called Tittle Tattle Corner. It was one of those areas of new construction where all the houses were either beige or gray, and we pulled in front of a trim house with white shutters. Flowerbeds of red geraniums were the only sign of flamboyance, and I rang the bell and listened to the muted sounds of suburbia: barking dogs, shouting kids and leaf blowers.

  “Hello?”

  The short, plump woman who answered the door observed us warily. Her gray hair was piled into in a curly pouf on top of her head and her eyes were red from crying.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  I smiled. “I’m Elspeth Gray and this is my friend…”

  The rest of my introduction was cut off by her excited gestures. Her small, plump hands flapped the air and her cheeks reddened. “I know who you are! I mean, I don’t know who you are, but I know who you are! I’ve read all your
books. I loved the Cheesecake Diaries, when Marin is in the kitchen and hears that song about going to the windows and walls and realizes she really is in love with Cole…wonderful stuff…” She cut off her excited babble and thrust her hand out at me.

  “I’m so sorry, I got carried away. I’m Helen Chatley, Crispin’s housekeeper. Were you friends of his?”

  We nodded.

  “Please come in.”

  The house was neat as a pin and decorated in the mid-century modern style with accents of dark chocolate, silver and light blue. Mrs. Chatley led us into the front room and we sat rather uncomfortably on the firm, gray furniture. There was a wall of mirrors, a triangular-shaped coffee table in jade green and a display cabinet of Bakelite bowls.

  Mrs. Chatley hovered uncertainly in the doorway. “Can I get you some tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee would be great.”

  She looked relieved to have something to do and scurried away. I turned back to Julia. “Keep her busy. I’m going to find Crispin’s camera.”

  Before she could protest I was out the door and down the hall. I passed a few open doorways and noticed a dining room and bathroom, both in the same immaculate condition as the rest of the house. The last door on the left was closed, and I opened it and peeked inside. It was Crispin’s office. It was small, little more than a closet, but compact and carefully organized. I noticed a desk in front of the window and began opening drawers. There were a few papers and a copy of Toy Train Enthusiast, but no camera. Where could it be? I went through the bookcase and file cabinet before I noticed a coat hanger in the corner. I did a quick search through the jackets and cardigans.

  There it was.

  I grabbed the camera and stuck it in my purse just as Mrs. Chatley’s voice floated down the hall. “What happened to Ms. Gray?”

  I heard Julia’s muted reply and sprinted to the bathroom as Mrs. Chatley came out of the kitchen. When I returned I saw she’d set out a small feast: Bundt cake, tea sandwiches and coconut cupcakes. I gratefully accepted a cup of coffee and a cupcake.

  “Sorry about that, I had to use the restroom.”

  “That’s okay. I was just telling your friend that I’m glad of some company today. This whole thing has been a nightmare. Poor Crispin…”