Turkey Day Murder

by Turkey Day Murder

  "Mrs. Stone, how nice to see you."

  Startled, Lucy turned and smiled at the new librarian, Eunice Sparks.

  "Well, you know how it is," said Lacy. "Work, kids—there's never enough time."

  "Oh, I know," Eunice agreed solemnly. Her brown eyes seemed almost liquid, floating behind her glasses. "And I see your byline all the time. Do you know we're having a special children's program this morning. With Fred Rumford from the college. Such a fascinating man."

  "That's why we're here," said Lucy. "Zoe and I want to learn all about the Indians."

  "And Indian dogs," said Zoe.

  "The workshop is just starting downstairs in the meeting room," said Eunice.

  "Thanks—see you later," said Lucy, leading Zoe through the children's section. "We'll pick out some books afterward, okay.?"

  As soon as Lucy opened the door to the stairs they heard the voices of the children and parents gathered for the workshop. What Lucy didn't realize until they reached the meeting room was that all the other children, except for Zoe, were boys. They were accompanied mostly by their fathers, but there were a few mothers, too.

  "Let's go, Mom," said Zoe, halting in the doorway. "I don't care about Indians."

  "Nonsense," said Lucy, heading for the two remaining empty chairs. "Indians are interesting."

  "That's right," said Fred Rumford, a tall man with thinning hair who had a pair of wire rimmed glasses perched on his nose. "Indians are very interesting."

  He was standing at the head of a long conference table with a plastic storage box in front of him.

  "What I have here," he said, peering down at the group seated at the table, "is the only remaining genuine Metinnicut artifact—at least, it's the only one we know about.

  "The Metinnicuts, as you all know, lived here for hundreds of years before the European settlers came. We don't know very much about them or how how they lived. We do know that they hunted for game—deer and rabbits and things like that—and they also ate a lot of shellfish." He paused and looked at the children. "How do we know this?"

  "Fossils?" asked a little boy with a fresh haircut.

  "Good answer. But the Indians only lived here in the past thousand years or so. Fossils, bones that have turned to rock, are much older than that. But we do have archaeological evidence we've dug up. What do you think it is?"

  Lucy knew Zoe knew the answer. They'd read about an archaeological dig in a children's magazine last night. She nudged her, but Zoe remained silent.

  "Arrowheads?" asked another boy, who was wearing a cub scout uniform.

  "Yup." Rumford nodded. "We have found arrowheads and spear points. What else?"

  "Treasure chests?" guessed a boy in a plaid shirt. Lucy heard Zoe give a disgusted snort under her breath.

  "No treasure," Rumford shook his head. "What do you think we've found? He was staring at Zoe.

  She hesitated, and Lucy held her breath, willing her to find the confidence to answer. Finally, she did. "Shells and bones."

  Predictably, the boys hooted. The answer must be wrong because a girl said it.

  "That's right!" exclaimed Rumford, silencing them.

  Inwardly, Lucy gave a silent little cheer for Zoe. She hoped her daughter would always be able to summon up the courage to give an answer, even a wrong one, but she knew the odds were stacked against Zoe. The older the little girl got, the harder it would become.

  "We can tell a lot about what the Indians ate from their garbage piles. We find bones from animals they ate and big piles of shells. We also know from what's in this box that they didn't just kill animals. Sometimes, they killed people."

  He had the boys' undivided attention as he opened the box and lifted out a decorated wooden object for them to see. It seemed to Lucy to be in two parts: a wooden shaft decorated with black designs that held a solid wooden ball.

  "It's a Metinnicut war club, used to bash out the brains of their enemies."

  "Yeah!" exclaimed the boy with the haircut.

  "Yuck!" said Zoe, wrinkling up her nose.

  "I'm going to put it back in the box and let you all take a look at it, and while you're doing that, I want each of you to take a pair of these protective goggles. Then we can start making some flints, okay?"

  Once Zoe was settled with her safety glasses and chipping away at her piece of flint, Lucy got up and wandered around the room, examining the displays that Rumford had brought from the museum. These were mostly points of all sizes—many of which would seem to be nothing more than bits of rock to untrained eyes. The war club, however, was undoubtedly something remarkable. Examining the workmanship, Lucy knew that it would have been difficult to produce anything like it even with modern woodworking tools. How could a native craftsman, working only with crude stone tools, make such a finely crafted weapon?

  As she studied the war club, Lucy wondered about Metinnicut culture and all that had been lost. What had their garments looked like? Their houses? How had they managed to survive in such a hostile climate for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years? What did their language sound like? What were their songs and dances like? What games did their children play?

  It seemed terribly sad to her that nothing remained of the Metinnicuts except for the war club. So much had been lost, impossible to recapture. She couldn't help wondering how different American history might have been if the European settlers hadn't considered themselves superior to the natives and had been willing to learn from them.

  "Look, Mom! Look what I made!"

  Zoe was standing next to her, holding a crude arrowhead in her small, plump hand. "Wow! That's neat."

  Lucy picked it up and turned it over. "Was it hard?" "No, Mom. C'mon. I'll show you."

  Lucy allowed herself to be led back to the table, where Zoe instructed her in the fine art of flintknapping. When they were through, she, too, had produced a passable arrowhead. When she finally looked up, she realized everyone else had gone.

  "I'm sorry," she stammered, blushing. "Are we holding you up?"

  "Not a bit," said Rumford. "It's great to see someone take such an interest."

  "It's fascinating," said Lucy. "It's amazing when you think about it. We have refrigerators and freezers and cars and TVs and computers, and it's a national emergency when the electricity goes out. These people lived so simply...."

  "Exactly," said Rumford, starting to pack up. "And they were successful until disease, brought by the Europeans, wiped them out, They had no immunity to common illnesses like measles and smallpox."

  "Can we help you with this stuff ?"

  "Thanks," he said. "We can go right out to the parking lot through the workroom next door. Saves going up and down the stairs."

  In a few minutes they had packed everything into plastic totes and gone out to the parking lot, forming a little parade. Rumford led, carrying a pile of boxes, followed by Lucy, who also had a stack of containers. Zoe was last, proudly carrying the box with the war club.

  "It's the gray van. It says Winchester College on the side."

  "W-I-N..." began Zoe, then stopped abruptly as Curt Nolan threw down his rake and approached them. He stopped in front of Zoe, towering over her.

  "What you got there?" he demanded.

  Zoe didn't answer, but stepped closer to Lucy.

  "Is it a war club?" Nolan bent down so his face was level with hers.

  Zoe nodded.

  "Aren't you awful little to be carrying something so important?"

  Nolan was no longer addressing Zoe. He had stood up and was talking over her head to Rumford.

  Lucy started to speak, defending her child, but Rumford beat her to it.

  "She's a very trustworthy child," said Rumford. "She was doing just fine."

  "Well, what's fine to you and what's fine to me are two different things." Nolan glared at him. "Of course, it's only an artifact to you, a curiosity. To me, it's my history and my heritage. It's sacred. And if you can't take proper care of it, you ought to return it to the people who c
an—the tribe."

  "What tribe?" Rumford's voice was contemptuous. "There are no Metinnicuts left. There is no tribe. And that's what I'm going to tell the feds."

  Nolan's face flushed purple and he made a move toward Rumford. His hands were clenched, he seemed ready to take a swing at the professor.

  Rumford's face was also flushed and he seemed ready to chuck the boxes he was holding in order to defend himself.

  Lucy stepped toward him, staggering and causing her boxes to slip. The professor reflexively braced himself, allowing her to steady herself.

  "How clumsy of me," she said, chuckling nervously. "We'd better get these things safely in the van."

  "Of course," said Rumford, turning and setting his boxes on the curb. Slowly, with shaking hands, he took the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the back door, pulling it open.

  "How's your dog?" Lucy had turned to face Nolan and spotted Kadjo, sitting patiently in the cab of Nolan's pickup truck. "Is he staying out of trouble?"

  Nolan didn't answer, but stood for a moment glaring at Rumford. He suddenly turned and stalked off, stopping to pick up the rake he had thrown on the grass and tossing it into the bed of his truck. He jumped in the cab beside his dog and drove off, leaving rubber.

  "Thanks," said Rumford. "I really didn't want to tangle with him."

  "He's not so bad," said Lucy, carefully taking the box with the war club from Zoe and handing it to Rumford. "Emotions are running high these days. The Metinnicuts have a lot at stake." She smiled. "He might have a point, you know. Didn't the Smithsonian recendy return some Indian artifacts?"

  Rumford's face hardened. "If they get recognition as a tribe, and that's a big if, then we'll have to reconsider." He snorted. "If you ask me, it's just a big bluff. They don't care about the war club or anything else. They only want to be a tribe so they can have a casino." He paused and looked at her. "I mean, if they care so much, how come they've never protested when the football team uses the club at their pep rally every year? I care about that club a hell of a lot more than any of these so called Metinnicuts—that's for sure. I make the team captain sign a paper saying he understands how valuable it is and that he accepts liability if anything happens to it, but believe me, I'm not happy, until the club is safely back in its case."

  Lucy nodded. "I understand how you feel," she said. Then she smiled. "But if I were you, I'd smoke a peace pipe with Curt Nolan. I think you have more in common than you think, and he's not somebody you want to have for an enemy."

  Rumford shrugged in response and got in his van, giving her a nod as he drove off. As Lucy watched him go, she doubted he'd follow her advice, and maybe he was right. Curt Nolan didn't seem eager to make peace with anyone.

  CHAPTER 6

  Sometimes controversy was a good thing, thought Lucy, as she pulled her cleaning supplies out from beneath the kitchen sink. Thanks to the fact that the Metinnicuts' petition was so controversial, the selectmen's meeting had been scheduled for Tuesday evening, instead of the usual afternoon time, so more people could attend. That meant Lucy had all day to get the house in shape for Toby's homecoming.

  Cleaning was never her favorite activity, but today she really didn't mind. She wanted everything to be perfect for Toby and his roommate Matt—or at least as perfect as it could be considering the house was over a hundred years old and occupied by an active family.

  Oh, she loved the old farmhouse that she and Bill had worked so hard to restore, but she had to admit the years had taken their toll. As she went from room to room with her dustrag and vacuum, she noticed the woodwork was smudged with fingerprints, the paint on the back stairway was scuffed and the wallpaper in the downstairs powder room was peeling. In the family room, the sectional sofa was looking awfully worn and the nig was past cleaning—it needed to be replaced. She sighed. There wasn't any hope of getting new carpet anytime soon; Toby's college bills made that out of the question. She went into the dining room to cheer herself up. There, the ceiling was freshly plastered and new wallpaper had been hung last spring.

  As she polished the sideboard with lemon oil, she wondered about Matt, Toby's roommate. What kind of home did he come from? Coburn University had a smattering of scholarship students like Toby, but most of the students came from families that had plenty of money and didn't even qualify for financial aid. Did Matt come from a home like that? Would he expect a guest room with a private bath when all she could offer him was the trundle bed in Toby's room. And that was if she could convince Elizabeth to move back to her old bed in the room she used to share with the other girls—a big if.

  All of a sudden the room she had been so proud of didn't look that great after all. The furniture didn't match; she'd found the big mahogany table at an estate sale but the chairs came from an unfinished furniture warehouse and she'd stained and varnished them herself. The rug was a cheap copy of an Oriental and the sideboard's only value was sentimental because it had come from her grandmother's house.

  She flicked the dustcloth over a framed photo montage that hung above the sideboard and paused, studying the kids' faces. The montage had been hanging there for quite a while. Zoe was still a baby, Sara still a chubby preschooler, and Elizabeth was actually smiling. Perhaps that was her last recorded smile, thought Lucy, her eyes wandering to the photograph of Toby.

  It was one she particularly liked, snapped just after Toby had scored a goal playing soccer in his freshman year of high school. He looked so young and boyish, with his chipmunk cheeks and enormous adult teeth, and so thoroughly pleased with himself.

  Her hand lingered over the photo. She would never admit it to anyone, not even Bill, but she had missed Toby terribly since he'd left for college. Maybe it was because he was her firstborn, maybe because their personalities were so similar, but she had felt as if a part of herself had suddenly gone missing. She smiled. But now he was coming home again and the family would be whole again. She would be whole again.

  Hearing the school bus she glanced at her watch. Goodness, where had the day gone? She'd been so busy she hadn't noticed the time, and no wonder. She'd cleaned both bathrooms and the kitchen and had tidied and dusted the entire house. Only one job remained: evicting Elizabeth. She went to greet the girls.

  "Where's Toby?" demanded Zoe, breathless from running all the way up the driveway.

  "He's not here yet," said Lucy.

  "Why not?" demanded Sara, dropping her bookbag on the floor with a thud.

  "It's at least a five hour drive, and he probably had classes this morning. I bet he'll get here around dinnertime."

  "Oh, goody," said Elizabeth, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I can't wait."

  Lucy bristled. "You still haven't moved your things out of Toby's room like I asked you to," she said.

  "I'll take care of it," replied Elizabeth, draping herself languidly on one of the kitchen chairs.

  "It's still his room, even if you have been using it. I don't want Toby to feel that this isn't his home anymore."

  "Well, it isn't, is it?" demanded Elizabeth. "He's not here anymore. Why does he get a whole room that he's not even using when I have to share with these cretins." "What's a—" began Zoe.

  "Am not!" screeched Sara, spraying everyone, and the table, with milk and chocolate chip cookie crumbs.

  "That's disgusting!" exclaimed Elizabeth, reaching for a napkin to wipe her face as Sara beat a hasty retreat.

  "Sara! Get right back here and clean up the mess you made, including your backpack!" yelled Lucy, shouting up the stairs.