Broken Strings

by Nancy Means Wright

  A fingerprint specialist hustled in from Burlington, spraying, dusting, fuming the area like he was killing fleas. A female cop was writing everything down in a notebook as part of the female-elected-secretary syndrome, Fay thought. The cops wouldn’t let Fay and Nova sit together, so they couldn’t merge their stories, Fay supposed, but that was a useless resolve. Nova was breathing heavily, as if he were still seeing the human marionette hanging on its rack. A third cop had photographed and sketched the bathroom, bedroom, and living room where rug and portrait had vanished. Though not into Puss’s Jetta, so the killer would have taken the stolen objects with him – in a truck maybe. If, that is, killer and thief were one.

  “Fay,” Higgins said. “Are you hearing me?”

  Fay nodded. Her brain was full of the fingerprint powders they’d used. When she tried to process the situation, her brain cells got stuck together. Or maybe she herself was half in shock.

  “Looks like this,” the lieutenant repeated. “Someone came in to steal the rug, rolled it up, stashed it in his truck. Then the guy came back for the portrait and – ”

  “Then there was Puss,” she said, “watching, horrified. And he – ”

  “Knocked her on the head with it.”

  “You think?”

  “There was a bump, yes. Something hit her, you could see the swelling up through the hair.” Higgins looked pleased with himself. Fay hadn’t noticed the head lump. She’d seen only the front view…enough.

  “But why would he hang her like that?” Fay wondered aloud. It had to be a man – she herself could never have managed it. “Puss wasn’t a puppeteer. She liked the puppets to show off maybe. She made Willard bring back the Beauty puppet.”

  “What? When was that?”

  “This afternoon, I think, um…” She buttoned her lip. Higgins was looking like a detective. Well, he was a detective, and now Willard was a suspect. When Willard was the last person in the world who…

  Higgins repeated his question. He was a dog starved for a dish of kibbles.

  “Today. Just today, that’s all I know. Willard wouldn’t harm a soul.”

  “I’m not saying he did. Just putting all the pins in order.”

  Was this a bowling match? “There was Rudolph,” she began, trying to get the focus off Willard. “Rudolph was the reason I came with Sergeant Nova, and then discovered, um, Puss.” Higgins lifted a fuzzy eyebrow. He, too, was taking notes. So he’d already listed Willard as a suspect? “Rudolph Wolfgang took my Beets with him,” she plowed on, “and I want him back. Not Rudolph – Beets.” She felt her cheeks heating up. “And here we are, just sitting around, while Rudolph is on the road with our boy!”

  Higgins was staring at her, looking fascinated. Was it Rudolph – or the button that had come undone on her shirt? She pulled herself together, ran fingers through her hair.

  “Definitely a suspect, that Wolfgang. On parole, too,” Higgins said. “Police are on the lookout between here and Maine. He’s not in Glenna’s car – they found that at a rental place.” He patted Fay’s arm, then slid his arm across her shoulder. “We’ll find him. Both of them. You’ll get your boy back, Fay.”

  Her cell phone was ringing. Which reminded her: did Beets have his cell phone with him? She hoped so, was sorry now she’d made a fuss about his keeping it. She slipped out from under Higgins’s arm. “Willard! Hello. Any news of Beets?”

  “No, but I’ve got the yew. Glenna wouldn’t let me cut hers so I found a bush down in the woods. It’s dripping with juice. I’ll make that controller tonight, Fay.” He was mumbling something about Glenna growing old with her yew tree and Fay had to smile.

  “If you hear from Beets,” she said, “let me know. I’ll be home soon as I can. A little trauma here at Cedric’s, as you know. We’ll talk later.” She pinched herself and didn’t feel the pinch. She was still in shock from the human marionette.

  “I did ask Glenna about her purse,” Willard said, sounding proud of himself. “And yes, her money was gone – she thinks sixty dollars. The money jar change is gone, too. Rudolph maybe rented a truck with it, you know? For that carpet?”

  “Let me talk to him,” Higgins said, holding out a hand for the phone.

  She clicked off. “Oops, sorry. My finger slipped. You can call him later.”

  The front door banged open. “What’s going on here?” Cedric demanded, taking in the scene, his face looking like a lobster trap. “What’s that cop car doing out front?”

  Chapter Nine

  A Kiss of Yew and a Chocolate Vision

  Monday, October 1

  One would think Cedric had been in love with Puss the way he carried on at the cemetery in New Hampshire; he was a man of a thousand faces, expressions that came and went. Artifice, Fay thought. She remembered how hard it was to show honest grief in a play. In Synge’s Riders to the Sea she’d played Maurya, who’d lost her last son to the roiling seas; and Maurya didn’t weep at all. She just said, “No man at all can be livin’ forever and we must be satisfied.” She said this even though her heart was split in six pieces, her world drowned – a husband and five sons.

  “My eyes will flow without ceasing,” the black-robed Episcopalian minister read from his Bible, “until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees. My eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the maidens of my city.”

  Two maidens now. Had he chosen that passage expressly? Shrewd fellow. She could hear sounds like a wind squall, blowing all around her. Across Puss’s grave was a group of women of indeterminate age, with sprayed hairdos and mascaraed eyes – the woman’s clients, no doubt, from the beauty spas of New England. If they could have seen their leader’s lank hair and smudged eyes where she hung from the bar of the tub, they’d have been horrified.

  But there was no face to show at the burial ground, just an urn of ashes. The autopsy revealed a blow to the head, no yew in the system. It seemed a spur-of-the-moment murder: the perp happened upon Puss and to keep her quiet, hit her on the head and strung her up. A lot of hard work to string such a large puppet! The string, or rather, rope, they’d discovered, came from a spool in the bedroom closet. The police had taken it to fingerprint, but to what avail? The killer was probably wearing gloves.

  Why had the killer gone to all that trouble? Why not just hit her and leave her? It didn’t seem like something Rudolph would have done. Although she didn’t know Rudolph well enough to know what he might be capable of. He’d been in jail for break-ins, theft, but never homicide, Nova reported. Rudolph’s wife’s death, though, was suspicious enough. Should Fay look into that? It was possible he’d knocked Puss on the head when she saw him stealing the rug, and someone else had strung her up. Someone with more knowledge than she had about Puss’s past. What secrets had the woman been harboring under that elaborate hairdo? What secrets had Marion held inside?

  Had Puss killed Marion, and then killed herself? No. A thousand times no! Not Puss, who coveted the Beauty puppet and fancied herself a gift to the female complexion.

  The pastor had finished the Ecclesiastes, reminding everyone to “Fear God and keep His commandments. As you do not know the way of the wind, or how the bones grow in the womb.”

  No, you don’t, Fay told herself, thinking back to the whole nurture versus nature argument: was a killer born, or did upbringing, environment, push him into killing?

  “For God will bring every deed into judgment,” the pastor went on, “with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

  The day of judgment. That was when Fay closed up her ears; in her view, the only judgment was here and now. The killer, when he finally came to light, would be judged by human beings as imperfect as he. She suddenly wanted to know this killer, who he or she was, what had led him or her to kill and then show off in such a cruel manner. Whoever killed Puss was full of hate. Why?

  Cedric was flinging dirt into the hole. His white shirt sleeves were rolled up, and he seemed ready for an afternoon of gardening. The dirt flew from his spade. An elderly woman�
�s hand touched his arm and he restrained himself. Afterwards a handful of men and women embraced him. Puss’s beauticians or neighbors, perhaps. But the lady with the long gray-black braid who’d shown up at Marion’s memorial was missing, and so was the Alzheimer mother. Fay must try to visit her. Gloria Valentini might have a rational moment, say something helpful.

  Not that Fay wanted to get involved with Puss’s killer; no, it was just that the same person might have killed the two sisters. Roy Higgins had asked her that when she called to cancel their Monday lunch. At least she had a good excuse today. “Not sleuthing, I hope,” he’d warned when she told him she was coming to the burial.

  She walked slowly through the damp grass, back to her pickup. She would skip the refreshments in the Episcopal Church basement. She didn’t want to see Cedric, not now. He’d been hysterical enough when he discovered what had happened. He’d been away all day at a meeting, he said. Was the meeting with Puss? Was Puss trying to take the rug and Cedric found her? So he strung her up as a sort of vindication? After all, it was Puss’s puppeteer father who’d steered Marion into puppetry, and she in turn had led Cedric into the money-losing enterprise. Cedric didn’t like to lose.

  Needing gas, Fay drove into the center of New London. Puss, she recalled, lived on Maple Street; it was on the card the woman had given her. Why not drive past, she thought as she pumped her costly gas? Take a look, maybe more than that?

  The house was a large white colonial: pillars lined the front entrance. A row of moribund hollyhocks and chrysanthemums hung their heads in front – there had already been a frost here. At the windows: white lacy curtains, white blinds, half closed. A china cat in one side window, its glazed green eyes peering out at Fay. The police had probably been here, searching for clues. For Marion’s diary? The one Puss said didn’t exist but was doubtless hidden somewhere in the house, unless the police had already appropriated it? Or perhaps they hadn’t come to New Hampshire at all. The police had turned Cedric’s house into a crime scene; for a few days he was staying at the local inn, pissed off, of course. “Damned bad luck,” he’d complained on the phone to Fay.

  Was he playing the innocent? She’d still put money on Cedric’s having a hand in Puss’s demise. Maybe using Rudolph as a ploy. He discovered him in the house, Rudolph hit Puss after she walked in on him and then Cedric finished her off. Why, Rudolph had no interest in string puppets! Sergeant Nova couldn’t seem to get that through his head. That Wolfgang fellow did it, he’d assured Fay on the phone that morning. He had the cops out all over Vermont looking for him. They’d located the outfit where he’d hired the rental truck and left Glenna’s car. He gave Glenna’s stolen credit card to the fellow. “My auntie,” the kid was heard to say, most likely prompted by the old man. The clerk, new on the job.

  She got out of the car, why not? Houses far apart, the only human a small girl on a front step across the street, tying a bonnet onto the head of a reluctant orange cat. Fay waved at her and the child waved back. She pressed the door buzzer, just in case a relative might be staying here. No answer. She walked around to the side and examined the garden: the plants were carefully deadheaded. Turning her head, she saw the little girl on her way down the street, too busy holding down the unhappy cat to watch Fay.

  The back door was locked but there was a bulkhead door; she yanked on it and it opened. She hesitated a moment, then shrugged, and climbed down into a concrete basement. It was furnished with a green ping pong table, shabby green-striped sofa, and shelves of boxes marked Hair, Lips, Cheeks, Buttocks. Makeup for buttocks? You had to be desperate to do that. Or have a much younger lover.

  Like Cedric – he was younger. Had Cedric been cheating on Marion with his sister-in-law? Cheating on both sisters with the French teacher?

  A battered box on the bottom shelf read Old Stuff. Fay peeked in. She unwrapped a pair of Hansel and Gretel marionettes, then discovered a slender witch with a brown face, black gauzy dress, and long knuckled fingers with pink curving nails. She lifted the dress to find a slip of yellowy paper with the note: Marion made me, October, 1975. In her own image. She would’ve been around six. Below the witch was another marionette in yellow silk but much less detailed: a bland face with yellow yarn for hair. The puppet was labeled “Fairy Godmother, by Puss,” October 1975. Puss would have been eleven. It was already clear which girl was the more creative.

  Fay wrapped the witch back in its crinkled paper and put it in her purse. The rest of the box contained reviews of the father’s shows at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. No diary here. If there was one it would most likely be in Marion’s Vermont house. Unless Puss had appropriated it, in which case it might be upstairs.

  She started up the cellar steps and tried the door. But then she heard a car door slam out front and hurried back down again and up the five concrete steps to the back yard. She ran around front and, oh lordy, there stood Cedric on the front porch.

  “Just wanted to see her gardens,” Fay said before he could berate her, although his face was already a gathering storm. “She has a neat garden around back, I mean she had. Some sedem still blooming, brown-eyed susans, yellow mums.”

  “Garden?” he said. “I know why you’re here. You’re a snoop. I don’t like snoops. I don’t know why you came to the service, you hardly knew Puss.” His eyes swept her body, up, down and around, as if she might have something stuffed into her pockets or behind an ear.

  She held tight to her purse. Don’t ask to look in here, she prayed to whatever purse-elves might be listening. “Puss was Marion’s sister,” she said aloud, taking a stance, glaring up at him. She wasn’t going to let him browbeat her. “Marion was my good friend. I’m taking over her work. And my foster boy was involved, according to the police. My friend Willard is a suspect. I want to see this killer caught.”

  “So do the police,” he said. “I’m leaving it to them and you’d better, too, before you fuck things up all the way round. Now if you weren’t my partner in this Valentini thing, and Marion’s friend, I’d report you here as an interloper. But since you are…”

  “You’ll let me go. Kind of you.” She stepped past the stocky body. “And why did you order that yew controller?” she called back. “The police will want to know.”

  But he’d already let himself in the door. She was almost out to the road now; she could see the little girl coming back with the stroller. Just as the child got to her car, the cat leapt out and ran behind the house in its pink bonnet.

  Which gave Fay a thought. If she came back, and she would – she would come in disguise. In a pink bonnet?

  She drove home to Branbury and turned into Flint Road, thankful for the dirt road after the long trip on the hot paved thruway. Yet she felt an emptiness about the place: no one running trains with Beets gone. Willard busy, no doubt, with the new controller.

  But here was Glenna at the door, waving her arms; she had news, it was in her face. She had a flare for drama, Glenna did – how many times Fay had come home to adverse news: Chance out all night, Ethan refusing to vacuum, TV refusing to speak.

  This time, hallelujah, it was Rudolph! They’d caught him red-handed on Route 7, motoring toward Canada, rug and portrait covered with a tarp in the back of the U-Haul. He was in the local lockup, awaiting a hearing. Stolen goods, broken parole, abduction of a minor – he’d soon be back behind bars.

  “And Beets’? Where is he, Glenna? Should I go get him? Higgins promised to call.”

  “He did. How else d’you think I know what’s going on?” Glenna’s right hand was jerking up and down like she had more to tell but couldn’t get it out.

  “Is he all right?” Fay pushed past the old lady, toward the kitchen phone. Her cell had died after Willard’s call, needing to be charged – or like Glenna, just being difficult.

  “Gone missing,” Glenna said, pushing out the words. “They don’t know where. He jumped out when Rudolph stopped for a red light, and vanished.”

  * * *

  Beets h
ad disappeared in the northern town of Georgia Plains, Fay found out when Glenna revived her with an iced coffee and she called Higgins back. “The kid can’t be far,” the lieutenant said. “Probably on his way back here. But not to worry. We got all the cops between Bennington and St. Albans on the alert. Next Monday, Fay? There’s a new café opening up in town, Eat Good Food, they call it. You on?”

  “Okay,” she said, to pacify him.

  But what if the killer found Beets before the cops did? Though why would the sisters’ killer have any interest in Beets? Except as hostage for something? All the TV shows Glenna loved to summarize at the supper table fast-forwarded across her mind: innocent people taken hostage by psychopaths and held in dank dirty cellars. Gruel and water twice a day – and then what would the psychopath do to them?

  Oh lordy, lordy. She wrung her hands. It was Rudolph who should be hanged!

  “By the way,” Higgins said, “we got the results back on the fingerprints.”

  “And? Get it all out. All at once, please. I can’t take bad news one at a time. No, wait till I get another coffee. I need the caffeine. Or a sedative, I don’t know which.”

  “You’d never make a cop. Dead bodies? Accidents, suicides? Blood?”

  “I saw Puss. Did I faint? No. You were saying about fingerprints?”

  “Everybody’s prints, yep, all over the living room. Yours, Cedric’s, the foster girl’s, Beets, your hired man’s…”

  “If you mean Willard, he’s not a hired man. He makes signs. He helps around here.”

  “Uh huh. Well, here’s a surprise for you.” She shuddered, shut her eyes tight. “Your sign maker’s prints are on the bedroom door. Bedroom door, Fay. On the bathroom door, too, where the dead lady hung.” He sounded triumphant, like he’d scored a touchdown, and still had the ball tucked under his arm.