Christmas Carol Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery)

by Meier, Leslie

  “We don’t qualify for assistance. Zach makes too much and we’re over the income limit by a couple hundred dollars. But the health insurance is expensive, more than our mortgage. We were just getting by but then Angie had a crisis and the bills started coming. . . .”

  “But you do have health insurance,” Lucy said.

  “It doesn’t cover everything. There are copays and coinsurance and exclusions. . . .”

  “Downeast is a local company—have you talked to Marlowe and Scribner? I bet they’d understand. . . .”

  Zach started laughing, revealing a missing rear molar. “Understand? All those guys understand is that I agreed to pay them nine hundred and forty-five dollars every month. That’s my problem, is what they told me.”

  “So that’s why we’re out here, demonstrating,” Lexie said, as a sudden huge boom shook the ground under their feet.

  “What the . . . ?” Everyone was suddenly silent, shocked by the loud noise and the reverberations.

  “Gas?” somebody asked. They could hear a dog barking.

  “Fire,” said a kid in a North Face jacket, pointing to the column of black smoke that was rising into the sky.

  “Parallel Street,” Zach said, as sirens wailed and bright red fire trucks went roaring down the street, lights flashing.

  A couple of guys immediately took off down the street, running after the fire trucks, and soon the crowd followed. Lucy always felt a little uncomfortably ghoulish at times like this, but she knew it was simply human nature to want to see what was going on. She knew it was the same impulse that caused people to watch CNN and listen to the car radio and even read the Pennysaver .

  So she joined the crowd, hurrying along beside Sara and her friend Amy, rounding the corner onto Maple Street, where the smell of burning was stronger, and on to Parallel Street, which, as its name suggested, ran parallel to Main Street. Unlike Main Street, which was the town’s commercial center, Parallel was a residential street filled with big old houses set on large properties. Most had been built in the nineteenth century by prosperous sea captains, eager to showcase their success. Nowadays, a few were still single family homes owned by members of the town’s professional elite, but others had been subdivided into apartments and B and Bs. It was a pleasant street, lined with trees, and the houses were generally well maintained. In the summer, geraniums bloomed in window boxes and the sound of lawn mowers was frequently heard. Now, some houses still displayed pumpkin and gourd decorations for Thanksgiving while others were trimmed for Christmas, with window boxes filled with evergreen boughs and red-ribboned wreaths hung on the front doors. All except for one house, a huge Victorian owned by Jake Marlowe that was generally considered a blight on the neighborhood.

  The old house was a marvel of Victorian design, boasting a three-story tower, numerous chimneys, bay windows, a sunroom, and a wraparound porch. Passing it, observing the graying siding that had long since lost its paint and the sagging porch, Lucy always imagined the house as it had once been. Then, she thought, the mansion would have sported a colorful paint job and the porch would have been filled with wicker furniture, where long-skirted ladies once sat and sipped lemonade while they observed the passing scene.

  It had always seemed odd to her that a man whose business was financing property would take such poor care of his own, but when she’d interviewed a psychiatrist for a feature story about hoarders she began to understand that Jake Marlowe’s cheapness was a sort of pathology. “Hoarders can’t let anything go; it makes them unbearably anxious to part with anything,” the psychiatrist had explained to her.

  Now, standing in front of the burning house, Lucy saw that Jake Marlowe was going to lose everything.

  “Wow,” she said, turning to Sara and noticing how her daughter’s face was glowing, bathed in rosy light from the fire. Everyone’s face was like that, she saw, as they watched the orange flames leaping from the windows, running across the tired old porch, and even erupting from the top of the tower. No one could survive such a fire, she thought. It was fortunate it started in the morning, when she assumed Marlowe would be at his Main Street office.

  “Back, everybody back,” the firemen were saying, pushing the crowd to the opposite side of the street.

  They were making no attempt to stop the fire but instead were pouring water on the roofs of neighboring houses, fearing that sparks from the fire would set them alight. More sirens were heard and Lucy realized the call had gone out to neighboring towns for mutual aid.

  “What a shame,” Lucy said, to nobody in particular, and a few others murmured in agreement.

  Not everyone was sympathetic, however. “Serves the mean old bastard right,” Zach Cunningham said.

  “It’s not like he took care of the place,” Sara observed.

  “He’s foreclosed on a lot of people,” Lexie Cunningham said. “Now he’ll know what it’s like to lose his home.”

  “You said it, man,” Seth said, clapping Zach on the shoulder. “What goes around comes around.” Realizing the crowd was with him, Seth got up on his milk crate. “Burn, baby, burn!” he yelled, raising his fist.

  Lucy was shocked, but the crowd picked up the chant. “Burn, baby, burn!” they yelled back. “Burn, baby, burn.”

  Disgusted, she tapped Sara on the shoulder, indicating they should leave. Sara, however, shrugged her off and joined the refrain, softly at first but gradually growing louder as she was caught in the excitement of the moment.

  Lucy wanted to leave and she wanted Sara to leave, too, but the girl stubbornly ignored her urgings. Finally, realizing she was alone in her sentiments, she shouldered her way through the crowd and headed back to Main Street and the Pennysaver office. At the corner, she remembered her job and paused to take a few more pictures for the paper. This would be a front page story, no doubt about it. She was peering through the camera’s viewfinder when the tower fell in a shower of sparks and the crowd gave throat to a celebratory cheer.

  You would have thought the football team scored a touchdown, she thought, stomping along the sidewalk that tilted this way and that from frost heaves. Nobody cared that a precious bit of the town’s heritage was going up in smoke. Nobody but her.

  The Pennysaver office was empty when she arrived. Phyllis, the receptionist, and Ted, who was publisher, editor, and chief reporter, were most likely at the fire. Good, she thought, he could write the story. She took off her parka and hung it on the coatrack, filled the coffeepot and got it brewing, and then she booted up her computer. She was checking her e-mails when the little bell on the door jangled and Ted entered.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, unwrapping his scarf. “Don’t you know Jake Marlowe’s house is burning down?” He had removed his Bruins ski cap and was running his fingers through his short, salt and pepper hair.

  “I was there. I left.”

  “How come?” His face was squarish and clean-shaven, his brow furrowed in concern. “That’s not like you, leaving a big story.”

  “The crowd freaked me out,” she said, wrapping her arms across her chest and hugging herself. “Sara was there—she was part of it, screaming along with the rest.”

  “You know what they say about a mob. It’s only as smart as the dumbest member,” Ted said, pouring himself a mug of coffee. “Want a cup?”

  “Sure,” Lucy replied. When he gave her the mug she wrapped her fingers around it for warmth. “I always liked that old house,” she said, taking a sip. “I sometimes imagined it the way it used to be. A painted lady, that’s what they call those fancy Victorians.”

  “Marlowe didn’t take care of it. It was a firetrap. Truth be told, it should’ve been condemned and it would’ve been if Marlowe wasn’t such a big shot in town. But he was on the Finance Committee and the fire chief wasn’t about to mess with him, not with Marlowe constantly pushing the committee to cut the department’s budget.”

  “I wonder where Marlowe was,” Lucy mused, setting her cup down. “I didn’t see him in the crowd.
Did you?”

  Ted tossed the wooden stirrer into the trash and carried his mug over to his desk, an old rolltop he’d inherited from his grandfather, who was a legendary New England newspaperman. “Nope, he wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe he went away for the holiday,” Lucy speculated. “Probably for the best. It would be awful to watch your house burn down.”

  “Yeah,” Ted said, clicking away on his keyboard. “I’ve got a meeting this afternoon over in Gilead. Do me a favor and follow up with the fire chief before you go home.”

  Lunch was long past and Ted had gone to his meeting when Lucy noticed the rattling of the old wooden Venetian blinds that covered the plate glass windows, indicating the fire trucks were finally returning to the station down the street. A few minutes later Phyllis came in, wearing a faux leopard skin coat and sporting a streak of soot on her face. “Jake Marlowe’s house burned to the ground!” she exclaimed. “What a show. Too bad you missed it.”

  “I was there for a while,” Lucy said. “Your face is dirty.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Phyllis hung up her coat and went into the tiny bathroom, lifting the harlequin reading glasses that hung from a chain around her neck as she went. “Look at that,” Lucy heard her saying. “It’s soot from the fire. And no wonder—that old house is still smoldering.”

  “It was some blaze,” Lucy said.

  Phyllis sat at her desk and applied a liberal glob of hand lotion. “I wonder how it started,” she said.

  “There was an explosion,” Lucy said, suddenly remembering the boom that had disrupted the SAC demonstration.

  “Must’ve been gas—I don’t know why people mess around with that stuff. It’s awfully dangerous.”

  “I wonder,” Lucy said, reaching for the phone and dialing. In a moment of madness, when he was looking for publicity for a food drive, Chief Buzz Bresnahan had given her his personal cell phone number. Lucy was careful not to abuse the privilege, but today she figured his secretary would be blocking calls.

  “Lucy,” he barked. “Make it fast.”

  “Okay. Any idea how the fire started? Was it a gas leak?”

  “Not gas. We’re not sure. The fire marshal is investigating. It’s definitely suspicious.”

  “Any injuries?”

  “No, I’m happy to say,” Bresnahan replied. “Gotta go. You better check with the fire marshal’s office. I’m pretty sure this is going to turn out to be a case of arson.”

  “Arson?” Lucy asked, but Buzz had already gone.

  Chapter Two

  Several firemen and a police patrol remained at the site of the fire through the weekend, watching for flare-ups and keeping thrill seekers and souvenir hunters away from the smoldering pile of rubble. On Monday the fire marshal’s team arrived, along with two trained dogs, Blaze and Spark. It didn’t take Blaze very long to make a disturbing discovery: the ruins contained a badly burned body, most probably that of the owner, Jake Marlowe.

  Lucy finally got confirmation from police chief Jim Kirwan on Wednesday, just before deadline. “Yup, Lucy,” he said, “it was definitely murder. Somebody sent Marlowe a mail bomb. It blew up in his face when he opened it.”

  “Are they sure it was actually Marlowe?” Lucy asked. “I thought there wasn’t much left.”

  “It was definitely Marlowe. His body was in the kitchen. Well, where the kitchen used to be. And Dr. Frost, the dentist who lives next door, recognized some bridgework he did for Marlowe.”

  “How can they tell it was a mail bomb?” Lucy asked. “Didn’t the fire destroy the evidence?”

  “I don’t know the details; all I know is what the state fire marshal tells me and he says it was a mail bomb. No doubt about it.”

  “Was it mailed locally?”

  “Uh, that he didn’t know,” Kirwan admitted. “We’ve got the post office working on it, but the assumption is that it was a local job. Think about it: Marlowe wasn’t very popular around town. A lot of people have lost, or are about to lose, their homes to Downeast Mortgage. And Marlowe didn’t do himself any favors with that FinCom vote cutting town employees’ hours. No, we’ve got suspects coming out of the woodwork, lots of them.” He chuckled. “Which reminds me, Lucy. Who’s holding your mortgage?”

  Lucy found herself grinning. “Nobody. We paid ours off last year.”

  “Lucky devils,” Jim said. “I wish I hadn’t refinanced back in two thousand seven when all the so-called financial experts were saying it was the thing to do. Now I’m underwater, like most everybody else in town. I owe more than the house is worth.”

  “Just hang on,” Lucy advised. “Prices will go back up; they always do.”

  “I dunno,” Kirwan said. “This is one time I kinda feel for the guy who did it. Truth is, I would’ve liked to do it myself.”

  “I’m assuming that’s off the record,” Lucy said.

  “Uh, yeah,” Kirwan said.

  Sitting in Jake’s Donut Shop on Thursday morning—this longtime Tinker’s Cove institution was named after its owner, Jake Prose—Lucy was staring at the front page photo of Marlowe’s burning mansion and mourning the quote she couldn’t use. What a bombshell that would have been! Police chief goes rogue! If only she hadn’t promised to keep his revealing statement off the record.

  “Hey, Lucy.” It was her best friend, Sue Finch, and Lucy hopped up to greet her with a hug.

  “Some fire,” Sue said, glancing at the paper as she took her seat and shrugged out of her shearling coat.

  Lucy tapped the head of a small figure standing in the crowd. “That’s Sara. She was supposed to be in class but she was out demonstrating with the college’s Social Action Committee.”

  “So Sara’s suddenly developed a social conscience?” Sue asked, removing her beret and smoothing her glossy black pageboy with her beautifully manicured hands. “I’m only asking because that leader, Seth, is pretty good looking.” She was pointing to the photo of Seth, his fist raised in defiance.

  “You think she’s interested in him, not the issues?” Lucy asked. She hadn’t considered this possibility.

  Sue rolled her eyes. “Yes, I do. And by the way, what do I have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?”

  Norine, the waitress, was on it. “Sorry, Sue. I got distracted,” she said, setting a couple of mugs on the table and filling them. “Ever since the fire I just can’t seem to concentrate.” She shuddered. “I didn’t like Marlowe—nobody did—but that’s a terrible way to go.”

  “You said it,” Pam Stillings chimed in, arriving with Rachel Goodman. Pam was married to Lucy’s boss, Ted, and she and Rachel completed the group of four friends who met for breakfast every Thursday at Jake’s.

  “That poor man,” Rachel added, lowering her big doe eyes and shaking her head. Rachel was a soft touch, who provided home care for the town’s oldest resident, Miss Julia Ward Howe Tilley.

  “He wasn’t poor,” Lucy said, knowing perfectly well that Rachel hadn’t been referring to Marlowe’s finances. “He was making a bundle off those mortgages and almost everybody in town has one. Chief Kirwan told me he’s got more suspects than he can count.”

  Norine arrived with coffee for Rachel and green tea for Pam, who ate only natural, organic foods. “You girls want the usual?” she asked. Receiving nods all round, she departed, writing on her order pad as she went.

  “Let’s not talk about the fire,” Rachel suggested. “I’ve got big news.”

  “Go on,” Sue urged. She didn’t like dramatic pauses unless she was making them.

  “I’m directing the Community Players’ holiday production,” Rachel announced. “It’s Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and I want you all to audition.”

  “Count me out,” Sue said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag but I’ll be happy to handle the refreshments.”

  “Great,” Rachel said. “But I think you’d make a fabulous Ghost of Christmas Past.”

  “That’s a joke, right?” Sue asked suspiciously.

/>   “Yeah,” Rachel admitted. “But I do think Lucy would be great as Mrs. Cratchit. She’s so warm and motherly.”

  “Me?” Lucy didn’t recognize herself in that description.

  “Actually, yes,” Sue said. “You are warm and motherly, even grandmotherly.”

  Lucy gave her friend a dirty look. “I adore Patrick,” she said, naming her son Toby’s little boy, “but you have to admit I’m a young grandmother.”

  “My grandmother wore thick stockings and lace-up oxfords with heels,” Pam recalled. “White in the summer and black after Labor Day. I don’t think they make them anymore. Her breasts went down to her waist and she wore her gray hair in a bun.”

  “Fortunately for Lucy they’ve invented underwire bras and hair dye,” Sue remarked.

  “And sneakers,” Lucy added, naming her favorite footwear as Norine delivered her order of two eggs over easy with corned beef hash and whole wheat toast. Norine passed Rachel her usual Sunshine muffin, gave Pam her yogurt topped with granola, and refilled Sue’s cup with coffee.

  “Auditions are tonight,” Rachel said. “Will you come, Lucy? And how about you, Pam?”

  “Ofay,” Lucy agreed, her mouth full of buttery toast.

  “I’m too busy for rehearsals,” Pam said, “but I can do the program for you. I’ll get ads and Ted can design it and get it printed.”

  “That would be great,” Rachel said. “Any money we make will go to the Hat and Mitten Fund.”

  They all nodded in approval. The Hat and Mitten Fund, which provided warm clothing and school supplies for the town’s needy children, was a favorite charity.

  “Maybe we could give part of the money to the Cunninghams,” Lucy suggested. “They’re having a hard time right now. Their little girl, Angie, has kidney disease and there are a lot of expenses their health insurance doesn’t cover.”

  “That’s a good idea, Lucy,” Pam said, a member of the town Finance Committee. “Lexie is one of the town employees whose hours were cut.”

  “How awful for them,” Rachel said. “Just having a sick child is bad enough, but now the Cunninghams have all these financial worries, too.”