by Dee Ernst
In other words, no one knew what was happening.
I knew they were all waiting for Sam to come by to give me the official story, so I could then pass it along. But the rumors were so amusing, even if Sam did tell me anything, I wasn’t about to end the rampant speculation.
Cait, who hated the gossip that was so much a part of Mt. Abrams, was offended at first, but even she had to admit that things were getting pretty entertaining.
I finally got a text from Carol that made me stop laughing.
At Emma’s. Can u come down?
I texted back, grabbed my slicker, and then yelled at Cait that I’d be back in a few.
The dock and clubhouse were still surrounded by yellow tape, but there was only one police car idling in the rain. I hurried down the slick street, and as I came to Emma’s house, I took a quick look in the still open garden door.
I almost cried. The whole one side of the garden had been trampled; there was yellow tape around a gaping hole, and there was mud everywhere. I heard a pitiful cry and saw Biscuit huddled under a bench, trying to keep out of the rain. I crouched down and called her, and the poor thing shot out and jumped into my arms. I turned and hurried to Emma’s porch.
The door was open, and through the screen I could see Emma and Carol sitting in front of the fireplace. Emma got up when she saw me and opened the door, taking Biscuit from my arms and scurrying back to the kitchen. I shook off my slicker, hung it on a frail-looking coat rack, and then sat next to Carol.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice.
“Emma has a theory,” Carol said.
“About what? Walt? Rita?”
Carol nodded. “Both. She said the police didn’t appear very interested, but since you know Sam…” Carol shrugged. “She wants to talk to you.”
Emma came back into the living room, cuddling Biscuit, who was bundled in a kitchen towel. She sat in a faded flowered armchair by the fireplace, and her other cats immediately swarmed her, finding comfy spots on the arms of the chair, along the back, and of course, on her lap. Her hair lay gathered in an untidy bun at the top of her head, and she was wearing a pale green chenille bathrobe. The perfect picture of a crazy cat lady.
“Thank you for coming, Ellie,” she said somewhat breathlessly. “I think the police need to find Walt’s lover. I think whoever it was killed him and buried him under those lilac bushes. I also think that when word got out about my koi pond, whoever killed Walt tried to discourage me from digging by trashing my garden. And I think that poor Rita saw whoever it was in my garden, and that’s why she was killed.” She was vigorously drying off Biscuit as she spoke, and when she was done, she shook Biscuit out of the towel. Biscuit jumped down, looked mildly embarrassed, then began to groom herself. The other cats all watched with interest.
“That’s actually a very good theory,” I said. “The police didn’t like it?”
She smoothed the damp towel on her lap and began folding it. “No. Apparently, they have no faith in psychic intuition or dreams.”
“Oh? You dreamed this?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes. Last night. I couldn’t see the person’s face, but the figure was tall and very thin. It could have been a man or a woman, I couldn’t be sure. And Walt was hit over the head with the shovel that Paula had been using to in dig her lilacs.” She sniffed. “You know that Paula was away the weekend Walt disappeared? She was moving her son, the oldest, to Delaware. He was going to college down there, you see. He hated his father. Couldn’t wait to get away. The younger boy was with them. So Walt was alone.”
I glanced at Carol. Her face was perfectly neutral.
“I didn’t know that. Did you tell that to the police too?” I asked.
Emma nodded. “Yes. They already knew that. Paula is up here, did you know? Both of the boys live close. But she told me she knew he had run off and good riddance to him.” She sniffed again. “Walt was not a very likable man.”
“Well,” Carol murmured, “someone liked him.”
“No one we know,” I said. “Do you know anything about the fire?”
Emma shook her head. “I just remember waking up, and the smoke was everywhere. I don’t know who called the fire department, but they were there by the time I got downstairs. And thank God, too, or that fire would have taken my house as well. Poor Paula. She’d had a rough time, moneywise, after Walt left. She was going to have to sell the house, you know.” Emma leaned forward and dropped her voice. “For a while there, I thought maybe Paula did it. But the investigators couldn’t find any proof of arson.”
I frowned, thinking. “I thought the rumor was that Walt came back and burned down the house.”
Emma sat back and looked smug. “I started that one.”
My jaw may have dropped. “Oh?”
“I didn’t want people to think Paula did it,” she explained.
I cleared my throat. “Well, Emma, although dreams are not necessarily, um, always reliable, it’s a good theory. The problem is Rita was killed very spur of the moment. She never should have been up at the clubhouse in the first place. So the killer was either following her around or was very lucky to find her alone by the docks.”
Emma frowned slightly, then shrugged it off. “Then he or she followed her. Rita, I mean. The dream wasn’t to clear about that part, but I definitely saw Rita getting hit with the same shovel that killed Walt.”
“There was no shovel found. Sam thinks she was hit with an oar,” I said.
Emma looked hurt. “After all, dear, it was a dream. And there’s a great deal of symbolism in dreams. The shape of the shovel, the shape of the oar….”
“Of course.” I stood up. “Well, thank you for telling me this. I’ll be sure to speak to Sam.”
“Will you?” Emma looked up at me hopefully. “I’d be so grateful. This is very bad for our neighborhood, all the negative energy, and I’d hate to think about poor Walt’s soul wandering in my garden, searching for closure.”
“Was he wandering before?” I asked. Carol, who had stood up with me, poked me in the side with her elbow.
Emma just frowned again. I may have said the wrong thing. I pulled my slicker off the rack to put it on. “I’ll talk to Sam,” I promised on my way out.
Carol’s umbrella was on Emma’s porch, and she shook it open. “Have you seen the garden?” she asked.
“Yes. It broke my heart. Do you know Paula?”
Carol shrugged. “Vaguely. From years ago when she’d come into the library.”
“We need to talk to her. Any ideas?”
Carol thought a moment. “Viv? I bet Viv knows her.”
I nodded. “Good idea. I’ll give her a call. Thanks for texting me. Some of Emma’s dream ideas might be sound.”
“I thought so too,” Carol said. “Let me know if you talk to Paula. I’d like to be there.”
We stepped off the porch together and into the rain, Carol turning one way, me heading up the hill toward home.
Sam listened very patiently to me after dinner. I’d made fried chicken, and we had leftover potato salad and sliced tomatoes. Cait and Tessa stuffed themselves then curled up to watch The Sound of Music. Again. Sam and I sat out on the porch, listened to the rain, and talked about Rita and Walt Malleck.
“When Walt disappeared, questions were asked, of course,” Sam explained. “Paula was with the boys, so there never any suspicion cast on her. There still isn’t. Not for Walter, anyway, although it’s pretty clear that the two incidents are connected.
Incidents. A woman was bashed over the head in broad daylight in what people insist is a safe and happy community, and it was considered an incident.
“I talked to Emma this afternoon,” I said.
He glanced at me, a smile playing along his lips. “She had a very interesting theory,” he said. “It might have been better received if she hadn’t told us that it came to her in a dream.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” I said. “It makes a lot of sense. We nee
d to find who Walt was involved with.”
“We? Again with the we?” He shook his head. “Ellie, please, you’re dealing with a very desperate killer. Look at what happened yesterday. In the middle of the morning like that? Anyone who’s willing to take that kind of risk needs to be left to the professionals.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “But let’s face it, I could do a much better job of rounding up all the little pieces of information floating around. Somebody saw something; they just didn’t know at the time it was important. Whoever killed Rita walked up to the dock, and then walked back down the hill. There are all sorts of people running around before the parade, but not up by the clubhouse. I just need to—”
“Leave it to the professionals,” Sam said slowly.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. I said yes, and I will leave it to you. But I can still ask questions, can’t I?”
He grinned. “What are you working on?”
Since I was a freelance editor specializing in mysteries and thrillers, who occasionally got wrapped up in whatever I happened to be reading, it was not a completely random question. “I just started a new author. Murder-mystery. Amateur sleuth.”
“Living in a small town?”
I grinned back. “Yes. And she knits.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I wish you would learn to knit.”
“Please. I’d end up stabbing myself in the eye with a needle.”
He stood up and pulled me up against him. We stood there for a few minutes, getting quite, ah, close. He finally stepped back.
“I have to go to work tomorrow.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay. So, I’ll talk to you.”
He reached out and stroked my cheek. “Yes.”
He was halfway down the walkway when he turned. “By the way, how was your dinner? With Marc?”
I swallowed. “Fine.”
I saw him nod, and he got onto his car and drove away.
It was raining again on Monday. Tessa was, at eight-thirty, already whining about having nothing to do. I had to finish my current project, respond to at least four new requests, and oh yes, talk to as many people as I could about Saturday morning.
Cait had taken the weekend off from work, so I knew that she had picked up at least two lunch shifts to make up for her lost time. I knocked on her door, and when she grunted, I stuck my head in.
“I’ll pay you twenty dollars to take Tessa somewhere.”
She rolled over and looked at me with one sleepy eye. “Like, the Meadowlands?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. The Meadowlands she was referring to was not the sprawling sports complex, but rather the legendary dumping ground for unwanted bodies. “I was thinking more like the mall. Or the movies. Or the FunPlex. Anywhere but here. I have to work.”
She yawned dramatically. “You’re lucky I’m not working. But if it’s raining tomorrow, you’re on your own. I have to go in by eleven.”
“That’s fine. I just really need today.”
“Twenty plus expenses.”
“Of course. Starting right now.”
“I need a shower.”
“Take her in with you.” I shut the door gently and went into my office.
My office had multipaned windows on three sides, and I usually needed the white sheers that covered the windows to keep out the sun. Today, I pushed them open and stared moodily out into the rain.
There was still one police car across the street by the lake. Yellow tape was still everywhere. There were three tents, one on the dock in front of the boat where Rita had been found, one where the dock met the shore, and one on the pathway to the clubhouse. I shifted my gaze from the dock to the clubhouse. Rita had come up this way to find her phone. Had she? Or was she interrupted before she had a chance to even look for it?
Sam had said I could ask questions. Well, no, not exactly. But he hadn’t said I couldn’t ask questions. I didn’t want to interfere, because he was right. Whoever killed Rita was fearless and desperate, not the kind of person I should go running after.
Sam had said Rita had been hit with an oar. Who would bring an oar into the clubhouse? Whoever did it wasn’t waiting for her, because none knew she’d be there. So, they had seen her, grabbed an oar off the dock, and followed her into the clubhouse.
I had to find out who, if anyone, was in or around the clubhouse Saturday morning on Founders’ Day business.
Who would know that information?
Well, Sharon would. She had been running the whole show, and I was pretty sure she was the type of person who tracked her minions very carefully.
One of the problems was, of course, that I didn’t know Sharon very well. Just like I didn’t know Paula Malleck, another person I really wanted to talk to. But I knew a few people who might.
So I sent a text to Shelly, Maggie, Carol, and Viv, inviting them for a little Monday night wine on the porch. I hinted at leftover cookies.
The good news—four yeses in four minutes.
The bad news—I had to drive out in the rain for more cookies.
Chapter 7
Of course, the first thing everyone wanted to talk about was Marc. Shelly, in particular, having missed my big date with him on Saturday night, wanted not only details, but also complete analysis and all possible speculation. I wanted to talk about anything other than Marc, because I was still fairly confused and pissed off and hopeful and disgusted and pretty much a complete mental jumble about him. And him and me. And Sam and me. And who I wanted, what I wanted, and who I wanted it from.
“Remember,” Shelly said, quite firmly. “He is the man who broke your heart and left you bleeding, alone, in the gutter. I love him; you know that. But I do not want to see him back in your life.”
Carol sighed. “Seeing them together was like seeing them back in the good old days,” she said. “Remember how cute they always were? The finishing each other’s sentences gets old, but they still get each other.”
Viv did not know Marc. She had moved in when our marriage had started to go south and had no memories of our “good old days.” She just remembered me sobbing, drunk and miserable, telling everyone what a lousy husband he’d been. She waggled her finger at me. “Girlfriend, you have a good man in Sam. I never knew Marc the charmer, or Marc the soul mate. I just knew Marc the prick. And a leopard does not change his spots. Just because he’s back to being all sweet and lovey dovey, don’t mean he isn’t still a prick.”
Maggie lifted her wine glass. “Here, here.”
“Listen, everyone, I know what Marc is, okay? After all, I was married to him. We had dinner together. I think he really does want me back, but that doesn’t mean I want us back together. Can’t I just enjoy his company while he makes his case?”
Viv settled back and shrugged. “Just be careful.”
“I will. I promise.” I looked around at them. It had stopped raining, and the moon was rising over the lake, and the night was cool and pretty spectacular. “I want us to talk about what happened this weekend. About Rita.”
Shelly leaned forward, her eyes bright. “Yes, I thought that might be what this was about. Anything from Sam?”
“I spoke to him tonight. She was hit with an oar. They found it, but there were no prints. The killer rubbed it clean with something; there are fibers they’re analyzing. She was hit in the front room of the clubhouse. Blood was found. She was dragged to the boat and dumped in.” I looked over to the clubhouse and tried to visualize what happened in real time. “She had been looking for her phone, which was why she was there in the first place. Someone came up behind her, hit her, and dragged her. The first two boats had gear in them, so she went into the third boat, which was empty. The killer went back, cleaned the oar, and threw it into the nearest boat. It only took seconds.”
“Wait,” Maggie said. “I think we’re picking up this story in the middle. I have to think that Rita getting killed had to do with Walter Malleck being found. Shouldn’t we start there?”
“But that was years ago,” Shelly said. “Nobody is going to remember details about the night Walter disappeared. But I bet people will know exactly where they were Saturday morning.”
“And what about Emma’s theory?” Carol asked, “ I thought it was pretty sound.”
“What theory?” Maggie asked.
Carol explained quickly, saving the part about it being a dream for last.
Shelly rolled her eyes. “She dreamed this?”
“Yes,” I said. “But it makes good sense. It might not be hard to find out if anyone saw someone going into Emma’s garden. Just like we need to find out who saw Rita coming up the hill. And who else they saw. Nobody was supposed to be in the clubhouse, right?”
Viv made a face. “I helped out the year before last with setup. The same group who clean up Friday night gets everything ready for Saturday night. All the tables are clean and set, floor’s cleaned; it’s all set to go. So when the Saturday night dinner starts, the doors are unlocked, and everything is ready. The porch is open, of course, and the bathrooms. Maybe somebody was cleaning the bathrooms?”
“We need to ask Sharon,” Maggie said. “I bet she knew where every volunteer was every single second.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said, drinking wine. “But I just don’t know her well enough to just dive into the conversation.” I looked around. No one was jumping up to volunteer.
“Well,” Carol said, “she and Mary Rose are pretty tight.’
My shoulders slumped. Mary Rose Reed was president of the Garden Club, and I had gotten on her wrong side earlier in the year by voting against her during the Great Hydrangea Debate. “That doesn’t help me,” I said.
“There’s a Founders’ Day meeting tomorrow night,” Shelly said. “They called an emergency session. I’ll go with you. We can get Mary Rose talking, I’m sure. You know how nosy she is. And I’ll bet she grabs Sharon, and we can listen in.”
I drained my wine glass. There were still cookies left, lots of them. “Good idea. I’ll bring down these cookies, so I won’t be tempted to eat them all by myself. But we need to talk to everyone who lives between Rita’s house and the lake. Everybody was out. Someone had to have seen something.”