Chapter 6
The following morning was Sunday. Sunday mornings I always attended mass at St. Bernadette’s Catholic Church, and today was no exception. I waited to hear the church bells ring before I dashed out my door, however, not wanting to arrive early enough to chat with my fellow parishioners. When I got there, Father Winfield was waiting at the back with his three altar servers. I nodded to him and slipped into the first available empty pew just as the hymn began and the procession started up the aisle. Betty Hiller hurried in behind them and sat down at the end of my row. During the offertory collection, Betty slid across the pew to sit beside me.
“Hi, Anna, how’re you doing? Jeff and I were so upset to hear about your husband’s death,” she whispered. “You have our sympathies.” Jeff, Betty’s husband, was a plumber and a volunteer firefighter who could be called out on an emergency at any time, so he slept late on Sunday mornings as often as Betty would let him. She volunteered with the church babysitting group, and had probably been waiting in the nursery until just after the hymn began to see if anyone required her help.
“I’m okay. Thanks for asking. How are you and Jeff?” I whispered back, trying to keep the conversation short. Betty could talk your ear off, and I had had to dissuade her from visiting too often when we first became neighbours.
“We’re both fine. So – did you hear what happened to Henry Fellows’ restaurant this morning?”
That wasn’t a question I had expected to hear. “No, did something happen?”
“I’ll say.” Her short blond curls were trembling with excitement. “Somebody plowed his car right into the restaurant this morning. Henry was inside getting breakfast ready when it happened. He wasn’t hurt very badly, but he could have been. The car drove right through the wall and demolished half his kitchen before taking off again. Henry went into shock, so the EMS took him to the hospital. But the really disturbing news was what he told one of the ambulance attendants after it happened. He said that Frank was driving the car that did it – that Frank had tried to kill him!”
I stared at her for a moment with my mouth open. “You have got to be kidding. That is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. Why would Frank want to kill Henry Fellows?”
“Henry claimed that Frank was afraid of the competition from his new restaurant, so Frank wanted to destroy it, trying to make it look like a hit-and-run accident. You ought to see the restaurant. There’s an enormous hole in the wall facing the side street, and part of the roof has collapsed. I saw it on the way to church this morning.”
“What about Frank? Has anybody seen him?”
“No, he and Judy supposedly left for Lethbridge last night to visit Judy’s mother.”
The congregation stood up as Father Winfield began the communion prayers, and Betty and I had to cut our conversation short. The remainder of the service was a blur, I’m ashamed to say, because I couldn’t stop thinking about Betty’s bizarre news. I very much wanted to see the damage for myself, so as the last notes of the recessional hymn faded away, I nodded to Betty, bid Father a brief good morning, and rushed out into the street. St. Bernadette’s was six blocks away from the restaurant, so it took all of five minutes for me to jog over.
As I hurried down Main Street toward Hank’s Hearty Home-Cooking, I could see a police cruiser and a fire truck parked out front on the street. The building was encircled by yellow tape, and orange plastic cones blocked off traffic to the side street where the kitchen was located. I darted around the corner and paused to stare at the damage. Betty had been right; there was a huge hole in the side of the restaurant, and the roof over the damaged section had collapsed. Shingles, insulation, broken bits of siding, and plastic were scattered across the sidewalk and along the boulevard where the grass was all torn up. A couple of guys from the fire department were starting to nail heavy green plastic over the hole. I walked right up to the yellow tape to have a look inside the kitchen while I still could. The place was a disaster. There were broken cupboards, boxes and cans, flour, pots, and utensils strewn all across the floor. The fridge was tipped over, and dishes of food and cartons of eggs and milk had spilled out, adding to the mess. I shook my head, wondering who could have done such a crazy thing. While I was looking, Steve Walker and our local insurance agent, Harold Gibbs, emerged from the alley behind the restaurant. Steve was gesturing towards the fat black tire tracks cut into the boulevard’s soft earth while Gibbs nodded and made notes on a clip board.
I followed them and overheard Steve saying, “Judging by the tire tracks, it looks like a full-sized truck went through the wall. It had to be heavy enough to break through the siding and the wall studs clear on through into the kitchen. There weren’t any skid marks on the street to indicate that the driver applied his brakes prior to hitting the building, so the damage was intentional.”
“Right,” Gibbs said.
“He – or she – came down the side street and made a right-hand turn into the building. Had the perpetrator wanted to do even worse damage, he could have hit the front of the building from Main Street and gone through the plate glass window, the seating area, and into the kitchen. Good thing he didn’t – the damage would have been much worse if he had hit the gas line.”
“Yup,” Gibbs said.
Steve looked up and saw me standing behind the insurance agent. He nodded. “Hi Anna,” he said.
“Hi Steve. Are you the only police officer in Crane?”
He smiled. “Sometimes it feels that way.”
“Pretty bizarre, eh?” I gestured at the building.
“Yeah, haven’t seen anything like it. Who’d drive into a building on purpose?”
“So, you don’t think it might have been an accident? Maybe a drunk driver did it.”
Steve pointed at the tire tracks on the boulevard. “Nah – even a drunk would have tried to stop when the truck came up over the curb. There’s no sign of it. The driver drove off the road and into the building without decreasing speed. This was definitely done on purpose. Whoever it was, it’s going to be impossible to hide the damage to his vehicle. We’ll catch him for sure.”
I took a step closer to the two men and lowered my voice. “Steve, I heard some nutty talk about Henry blaming Frank for the accident.”
Steve looked down at his boot and knocked some mud off the heel. “Between you, me, and Mr. Gibbs here, yeah, Mr. Fellows was saying something about that to the EMS guys, but he was pretty upset and going into shock when he did. I don’t know if he actually saw anything – Mr. Fellows was knocked down from behind.”
“Are you trying to contact Frank?”
“Yeah, they called him this morning at Judy’s mother’s house in Lethbridge and suggested that he and Judy return sooner rather than later. They’re on their way now.”
Mr. Gibbs, a stocky, middle-aged man with a fringe of rust-coloured hair around his pink dome, spoke up. “Hey, Anna, I’ve been hearing some pretty interesting talk about you this week. Two crimes in Crane in one week – it’s practically a crime wave.” He gave me a big wink. “Steve, I hope you can protect the rest of us from these dangerous criminals.”
I blushed, and Steve took Gibbs by the arm. “See you around, Anna,” he said, leading the insurance agent away. I decided to avoid conversation with the knot of gawkers chatting on the sidewalk, and went home. When I got there, the forensics squad was waiting for me. It felt as if the whole world had gone crazy.
Framed for Murder Page 6