The Walleld Flower

by Lorraine Bartlett

  Katie straightened indignantly. “Me, attract death? Detective, that poor woman’s been dead for decades.”

  “And how do you know it was a woman?” he asked suspiciously

  Katie frowned. “Long blonde hair, a locket—it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the gender.”

  Davenport glowered. “Just what were you doing here anyway, Mrs. Bonner?”

  “Paying a friendly visit to my new neighbors on behalf of the Victoria Square Merchants Association. Believe me, I didn’t want to find the remains of that… that poor person.”

  “Detective! Detective!” Rose called, elbowing her way through the crowd. “I heard they found a body.”

  “You’ll have to read about it in the paper, ma’am,” he said, ignoring the agitation in her voice as he turned back toward the mansion entrance.

  “Was it a woman?” Rose persisted. “Blonde hair, brown eyes? Did she have a locket?”

  Davenport stopped dead, turned. “Locket?”

  “Rectangular, sterling silver. Rhodium plated with a bright-cut floral design,” Rose cried in desperation. She held out a wallet-sized photo, waving it at him.

  Davenport trudged down the steps, took the picture from her, studied it, and frowned. Then he lifted the crime tape, motioning her forward.

  Katie hurried to meet Rose, steadying the elderly woman as she climbed the six shallow steps into the mansion.

  Portable work lights illuminated the crime scene. The room seemed claustrophobically small with so many deputies and technicians crowded in. As the trio entered, they stepped back, quieting as Davenport approached.

  The wall had been taken down in one piece, thanks to a reciprocating saw, and now lay flat on the floor. The rest of the drywall had been removed, revealing the earthly remains—just bones—in situ, wrapped in clear plastic sheeting and lying on a fluffy pillow of faded pink fiberglass. A petrified black substance—rat or insect dung, Katie surmised—was also visible. She shuddered at the thought of how it had gotten there and turned her attention to the wooden studs, which were twenty-four inches on center—not a lot of room. The body must have been wedged in at an angle, the shoulders cocked, the wrists crossed in front of the pelvis. No remnant of cloth or flesh remained.

  Rose blanched, and Katie felt her friend wobble in her grasp.

  “Do you recognize the locket?” Davenport asked the older woman.

  Tears filled Rose’s eyes and she nodded, the movement causing her to sway. “It belonged to my niece.” She took a shuddering breath and choked on a sob. “Oh, Heather, everyone thought you’d run off to New York—and you were here all along,” she said, and collapsed in a dead faint.

  Two

  Detective Davenport turned the still-shiny locket over and over in his stubby fingers while a shell-shocked Rose gripped a cup of, by now, cold coffee and stared into space.

  Katie felt like an intruder, yet the two of them were using her office at Artisans Alley as a makeshift interrogation room; Davenport sat at her desk while Rose was planted in her guest chair.

  Katie leaned against the battered, buff-colored file cabinet, looking over Davenport’s shoulder. Surely the lab team had dusted the locket for possible fingerprints before releasing it to the detective.

  Katie twisted the wrapper from a peppermint. The sound of crinkling plastic drew a pointed glare from the detective. As an act of defiance, Katie popped the candy into her mouth and crunched it between her molars.

  “This isn’t a conventional locket,” Davenport said to Rose. “It’s too fat.”

  Rose sniffed. “Actually, it’s a pillbox. Heather had epilepsy. She was always forgetting to take her medication. I modified it myself, so she could wear it on a chain. She was ashamed of her health problem.”

  “How often did your niece have fits?” Davenport asked.

  “Detective!” Katie admonished. This guy could use a session or two in sensitivity training.

  “Quite frequently, I’m afraid,” Rose answered matter-of-factly. “She wasn’t even allowed a driver’s license.”

  Davenport scowled. “And why did you say you thought she’d run off to New York?”

  “I never thought that,” Rose snapped. “That was what the Sheriff’s Office decided when we reported her as missing.”

  Davenport bristled at the implied criticism. “There had to be a reason for that opinion.”

  Rose frowned. “Heather did want to be a model. In fact, she’d even had a few assignments at fashion shows in Midtown Plaza in Rochester.”

  That was quite a while ago. The state’s first enclosed mall hadn’t been a shopping mecca for years.

  Davenport didn’t seem the least bit interested in Heather’s career aspirations. “Explain to me again why you immediately assumed the remains might be that of your niece,” he said.

  Rose sighed. “No one else in McKinlay Mill has ever gone missing—at least not for more than twenty years. Part of me wants closure. A bigger part hopes it isn’t Heather so I can go on pretending there’s still a chance she might one day come home.”

  Davenport pursed his lips, continuing his inspection of the locket. “Why isn’t this thing tarnished?”

  “It’s chemically treated to resist oxidation,” Rose explained.

  Davenport’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know so much about it?”

  “Rose deals in jewelry,” Katie said, exasperated.

  Davenport pried off the locket’s lid, which made a soft popping sound. “No pills here,” he said and, using the tip of a sharp pencil, pried out a small black-and-white photograph, which had been wedged into one side of the locket. “Who are these people?”

  “That’s my sister and brother-in-law, Iris and Stan Winston. I took the photo back in the 1960s.” Rose swallowed. “They’re both dead now. Stan died about eighteen years ago, and Iris a year after—of a broken heart. Detective, how—how did Heather die?”

  Davenport shot Katie an evaluating look, as though asking if she thought Rose could handle the truth. She nodded ever so slightly, then moved closer to Rose, resting a hand on the old woman’s thin shoulder.

  “Probably strangulation, ma’am. The medical examiner will be able to tell us for sure, probably tomorrow. We’ll probably have to get a forensic anthropologist in, too.”

  “Then she wasn’t put there… I mean, was she already… ?”

  Davenport nodded, his voice softening. “Yes, it looks like she was dead when they nailed up the drywall.”

  Katie raised an eyebrow. Maybe Davenport had more compassion than she’d given him credit for. And yet something didn’t add up. She worried at her lip, thinking back to what she’d seen at the crime scene. It would eventually come to her.

  Rose’s gaze focused on the locket once more. “Detective, do you think I could just… hold it… for a minute?”

  Davenport stared possessively at the still-gleaming metal box, seeming to weigh the request. Then, with a shrug, he handed Rose the locket.

  Rose’s trembling bony fingers wrapped around the little silver cask. Katie’s heart ached as Rose raised it to her lips and kissed it. A tear leaked from the old woman’s eye, falling to soak into her pale blue slacks.

  Davenport picked up the creased wallet-sized high school graduation picture of the pretty young woman with the silver locket decorating her throat. “Tell me about Heather, Mrs. Nash.”

  Rose let out a long breath. “When she disappeared, Heather was a sophomore at the community college, but she missed a lot of classes. Transportation from McKinlay Mill to Henrietta was a bit of a problem. She rode with a local girl for a while, but they had a falling out and my sister, Iris, had to drive her to and from her classes.”

  “Did the girl live at home?”

  Katie bristled. Girl?

  “Yes,” Rose answered with a nod.

  “Did she have a job?”

  “No. It would’ve interfered with her schoolwork,” Rose said, her voice faltering.

  Davenport remained ever the co
ol, calm detective, completely unmoved by her growing distress. “Did Heather have a boyfriend?”

  “Jeremy Richards. He wasn’t from McKinlay Mill. I don’t know what happened to him. He left the area soon after Heather disappeared. Stan always thought the boy was responsible for her disappearance.”

  Rose toyed with the locket, lovingly rubbing the etched decoration with her right thumb, letting the chain dangle from her fingers. “Heather liked silver better than gold,” she said to no one in particular.

  “When did Heather disappear?” Davenport asked.

  “November seventeen, twenty-two years ago.”

  Davenport’s eyes widened as though the date held some significance, but then he seemed to shake himself and turned his face aside.

  Antsy, Katie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Perhaps you ought to go back to headquarters and review the old case files,” she suggested, hoping he’d take the hint and vacate her office. Instead, he seemed to have grown roots.

  “Can I keep this locket, Detective?” Rose asked.

  He shook his head and held out his hand. “I’m afraid it’s evidence, Mrs. Nash.”

  Again tears filled Rose’s eyes as she reluctantly relinquished the treasure she’d thought forever gone. “When will I get it back?”

  “When our investigation is complete, and it’s established that you are the deceased’s next of kin.”

  “Oh, come on, Detective. Rose identified the locket, plus the picture of the people in it. What more do you need?” Katie asked.

  “Dental records will confirm whether or not the remains are Heather Winston’s,” he reaffirmed.

  “Heather and everyone else in town went to Dr. Elliott. He’s been dead for years. His daughter was—”

  “I’m sure we’ll locate the records, ma’am,” Davenport said, cutting her off, “although it may take some time.”

  “But I want to give Heather a decent burial! She deserves that,” Rose insisted.

  “That can happen, if we establish that this was your niece.”

  Rose’s tears had dried, and her eyes now blazed with anger. “Of course it’s Heather. The locket proves it.”

  Davenport shook his head. “For all we know, your niece might’ve been present at the time of this person’s death, put the locket on the body, and stolen the victim’s identity. As we speak, Heather Winston could be a forty-year-old woman living in Flagstaff, Arizona—if not Timbuktu.”

  “That’s preposterous,” Rose blurted. “Heather was a good girl. She wouldn’t have disappointed her parents like that. She’d never—”

  Davenport abruptly rose. “I’m afraid this interview is at an end, Mrs. Nash. I’ll be in touch.” He tucked the locket into his suit coat pocket and strode from the room without a backward glance.

  Rose stood, too. “That—that man!” she exclaimed and turned to Katie. “Did he treat you as shabby after Ezra’s death?”

  Katie sighed. “I tried to tell myself it was job burnout. After all, the poor man recently lost his wife and has three teenaged daughters to deal with. That’s a job in itself. But now I’m beginning to think he’s just a grump.”

  “And he didn’t do much to solve Ezra’s murder, as I recall. It was you who figured out who killed him.”

  That was true, but spreading that opinion wasn’t going to win Katie friends with the Sheriff’s Office.

  Fists clenched, Rose paced the tiny office. “I suppose he’ll drag his feet working on Heather’s murder, too. Well, I’m not going to stand for it.”

  “Rose, he probably isn’t eager to work on a cold case that will be difficult to solve. There really can’t be many clues after all this time.”

  “Katie, I’m seventy-five years old. I haven’t got years to wait for him to get motivated. It looks like I’m going to have to take matters into my own hands.”

  “Now, Rose—”

  Rose turned, facing Katie. “Will you help me?”

  Katie started. “Me?”

  “Well, you did solve Ezra’s murder.”

  Katie raised a hand in denial. “That was a fluke. I didn’t set out to do it.”

  “But you did do it!”

  “Rose—”

  “Please, Katie? This is important to me. Please, please help me!”

  Rose had that same look of determination in her eyes that Katie’s aunt Lizzie MacDuff often adopted when she wanted some unpleasant task done, like cleaning the toilet or emptying out the gutters. Katie felt her resolve melt. Her soft spot for elderly people made her a pushover, especially with Rose.

  “Well, I suppose we could ask a few questions, poke around a little bit. But Detective Davenport won’t like it, and he’ll do everything he can to stop us.”

  “Heather was my niece. It’s my duty to my sister, and as her aunt, to find out what happened to her and make the person who killed her pay.”

  Katie sighed, reaching out a hand to rest on Rose’s shoulder. “You’ve had a traumatic afternoon. You should go home and rest.”

  “How can I rest when Heather’s murderer is out there somewhere, running around free?”

  Katie could only nod. “Would you like me to drive you home?”

  Rose pursed her lips. “I may be old, but I’m not feeble.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  Rose’s expression softened. “I know.” She clasped Katie’s hand. “Thank you, dear. Together we’ll find out who killed Heather. Even if I have to die trying.”

  Katie didn’t like to feel rattled, but if she was honest with herself, despite her outward appearance of calm, she was definitely in a state of denial. Finding what was likely Heather Winston’s earthly remains had indeed left her feeling decidedly unsettled. She had too much on her mind to allow herself to dwell on the whole subject. And yet… she knew Rose would keep pushing.

  Katie fought to concentrate on the printed spreadsheets before her. Artisans Alley’s bottom line had improved considerably since she’d taken over its management some six months before, but there was still so much to do if she was going to drag it completely out of the red and into solvency.

  She thought she heard a noise off to her right, but it really didn’t register, so she paid no attention to it. She shook her head at the expenses column. There wasn’t much she could do about the escalating utility costs. Sales had dropped considerably since the holidays. Taking ten percent of her rent-paying vendors with it. With Easter right around the corner, it was time to put another ad in the Rochester newspaper. Not too big an ad—and only if she could convince the Merchants Association to go in on it.

  “Ahem.”

  This time Katie turned at the interruption, and found Gilda Ringwald standing in the doorway of her office. Gilda, of Gilda’s Gourmet Baskets on the south side of Victoria Square, was the Victoria Square Merchants Association’s PR director—and she’d arrived just in time to receive Katie’s ad pitch.

  “Gilda, I was just thinking about you,” she said with a smile in her voice and rose from her chair.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” Gilda asked sheepishly, her shoulders rounded as though she were trying to look smaller than her five foot four inch height.

  “For you, always. Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Katie asked and ushered Gilda into one of her shabby guest chairs. A trip to OfficeMax was in the offing—she really should replace the chairs with something more comfortable and stylish. One day…

  “Oh, no,” Gilda said and sat down, resting her empty hands on the knees of her navy slacks. Katie always found Gilda’s jet-black pageboy haircut to be a bit disconcerting on a woman her age—late fifties or early sixties. But she had no complaint with Gilda’s efforts on behalf of the Merchants Association, of which Katie was the reluctant head—voted in after Ezra Hilton’s untimely passing the previous fall.

  “What brings you to Artisans Alley? Something for the Merchants Association?” Katie asked, almost dreading the answer.

  “Actually, I’m here on some person
al business. I want to ask a favor of you.”

  “If I can help—I’d be glad to.”

  Gilda’s cheeks blushed. “Conrad and I are finally going to tie the knot.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Katie said with genuine surprise. She understood that Gilda and Conrad Stratton, who owned the Square’s wine shop, The Perfect Grape, had been a couple for a long time. Decades, in fact. For them to suddenly marry…

  Gilda smiled and nodded. “We never thought we’d need that piece of paper—but we’re getting on in years, and if something happened to either one of us, it would be better to be married in the eyes of the state than to be considered just good friends.”

  Katie nodded. “I understand completely.” But what kind of favor could Gilda have in mind that involved Katie—or did she want Artisans Alley to play a part in the proceedings?

  Gilda continued to smile, looking somewhat dreamy.

  “You said you needed a favor?” Katie prompted.

  Gilda shook her head as though to clear her mind, and giggled. “I’m sorry, I just never thought I’d get to be a bride. I’ve had so much fun this past week making plans.”

  “What have you done so far?”

  “I’ve settled on a dress, and called Judge Hart—she’s a dear, isn’t she? And we’re making the final arrangements for the reception at Madison’s on the Canal in Spencerport.”

  Swank!

  “When is the wedding?” Katie asked.

  “A week from Saturday.”

  Whoa! That was sudden.

  “Oh, my,” Katie said, taken aback.

  “I know it’s rather short notice, but I was wondering… that is, if you had the time…”

  “Do you need a place to have the actual wedding?” Katie asked, thinking of Artisans Alley’s large, and frequently empty, lobby. It could probably hold fifty people and had served as a gathering place after Ezra Hilton’s funeral service back in October. Of course, for a wedding it would need to be repainted, but that could happen before the big day.

  “Actually, we’re planning on getting married at the restaurant with the reception immediately afterward. It’s just so much easier to do on such short notice.”