“How long did you work there?”
“Oh, seven months or so. I’d make a little progress, and then some new stuff would come in. It was overwhelming. I was glad when Amelia began to take an interest in the collection. She enjoyed the sorting and that kind of thing a lot more than I did. She’d spend hours browsing through the shelves, just looking.”
Margaret lifted a hand to brush her dark hair out of her eyes. If she was aware of Amelia’s pilfering, she wasn’t letting on. But we could get into that later.
“Amelia was there because of Sunny’s interest in the right-to-die movement?” I asked.
Margaret nodded. “Amelia and Jed founded the Hemlock Guild here in town. They’ve been trying to get the legislature to change the law to allow assisted suicide. It’s a heavy lift, of course. But you have to give them an A for effort. They worked at it.”
“And that’s when Amelia began coming to Hemlock House?”
“Yes. Sunny had been interested in the movement for some time. She became more interested after she was diagnosed with cancer.” She sighed. “I was sad when she died. I told the board chair—not a nice person, I’m afraid—that I would stay on until they found somebody to take over and make a real library out of it. I’ve got to hand it to Dorothea and Jenna. They’re doing a great job.”
I wasn’t finished. I wanted to find out what Margaret might know about Sunny’s death. But the chief was shifting in his chair. Bojanov noticed and leaned forward, intervening.
“So you know nothing about the theft of that book?” she asked.
I sighed. Bojanov had brought us back to the accusation, which was only going to result in more antagonism.
“Of course I know nothing,” Margaret said indignantly. “You’re welcome to search this house if you want to. I gave up my apartment six months ago, when Mom got sick. I’ve been living here ever since. So go ahead, search if you want to.”
“Actually, we’re planning to do that,” Bojanov said. She pulled out the warrant and handed it to Margaret. “This copy is for you.” Getting up, she said to the chief, “I’ll go tell Officers Murphy and Roberts that they can come in now.”
As Bojanov left the room, the chief shifted in his chair again. “Sorry, Meg,” he muttered, half under his breath. “Had to do this.”
“Of course you did,” she said sarcastically. “Well, unless you want to handcuff me, I’ll go make some hot chocolate. Your guys must be half frozen, sitting out there all this time.”
The chief stood as Margaret left the room. I felt sorry for him. He was trapped in one of those inescapable damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t cul-de-sacs. “I’m sure you have other things to do this morning, Ms. Bayles,” he said. “We’re done here.”
I didn’t need to be told twice that he wanted to get rid of me, but I wasn’t quite ready to go.
“You have my card,” I said. “If your county prosecutor has any questions for me, she can call or email. Glad to help if I can.”
“Yeah.” Remembering his manners, he said, “Thanks for coming.”
I held his eyes. “I suspect that Ms. Anderson knows more than she thinks she knows about what might have led up to Sunny Carswell’s murder. And both you and your prosecutor may want to talk to Claudia Roth. She might have some useful witness information on both Conway and Scott.”
Cops don’t like it when a lawyer suggests what to do, so I didn’t wait for him to respond. Anyway, it wasn’t my business—he was going to handle this case the way he wanted to. My only concern at this point was the Herbal, and that felt like a lost cause. I put out my hand, he shook it automatically, and I turned to go.
But before I put on my coat and saw myself to the door, I went to the kitchen, where Margaret was turning on the burner under a saucepan of milk on the stove.
“Could I ask you a question?” I ventured. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the Blackwell Herbal or the Carswell library.”
She went to a cupboard and got out several cups. “What do you want to know?”
I cleared my throat. “When you were telling us what you do, you mentioned that you write about nontraditional relationships in the ‘kink culture.’ That’s a term I’m not familiar with. What is it?”
She found a spoon, went to the stove, and began to stir the milk. From her sidelong glance, I guessed that my question was the dumbest one she’d heard all year.
“It refers to sexual tribal communities,” she said. “BDSM.”
“BDSM? Sorry. I’m not—”
Her angled hair swung against her cheek. She didn’t say dork, but I was sure she thought it. “BDSM is an umbrella term for certain kinds of erotic behavior between consenting adults.”
“Certain kinds of . . .”
“Bondage, dominance, sadomasochism.”
After a moment, she added, impatiently, “Fifty Shades of Gray. Not a good movie, not even a good book. But one you might have heard of.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, right. Well, thanks. I can see myself out.”
“Hey.” She was looking down at my wet loafers. “I’ll bet my mom’s snow boots would fit you. They’re in the box in the den—the one that’s going to Goodwill. I think there’s a couple of pair of wool socks, too. Take what you want.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Thank you,” I said fervently. “Thank you very much.”
She went back to stirring the milk.
Chapter Fourteen
In the Victorian language of flowers (an elegant means of communication between nineteenth-century friends and lovers), hemlock conveyed a poisonous message: “You will be the death of me.”
Susan Wittig Albert
China Bayles’ Book of Days
The snow boots had never been worn. They were fuzzy inside, and only a half-size too large—a perfect fit, after I pulled on a pair of thick gray crew socks that came almost to my knees. I stuffed Ruby’s wet socks into my loafers and carried them with me as I saw myself to the door.
Stepping outside, I saw that the neighborhood had taken on a Christmas-card beauty that tempted this Texas girl to just stop and gawk for a moment or two. I welcomed a cleansing breath of pine-scented air into my lungs, holding out a mittened hand to catch a few snowflakes. I pulled up the hood of my borrowed parka, thrust my hands into its pockets, and drew another breath, a deeper one. Some deviant part of me wished she knew whether Margaret and the chief were involved in the kink culture, but my better angels shoved that thought away. Their private lives were their private business, not mine.
Still and all, the morning had been informative. Margaret’s answers filled in at least some of the blanks. Amelia’s note explained her role in Sunny’s death and her attempt on Conway’s life. From Jed’s Socrates.com sales, an investigator could piece together a list of what Amelia and Jed had stolen from the Carswell library. Jed’s commissions were a different matter—that information was likely available but it might take a forensic accountant to dig it up, under the direction of the prosecutor.
But there was still no sign of the Herbal, and I had done everything I could. It was time for me to go back up the mountain, which might not be as easy as it had been the day before. Virgil was here, with a vengeance.
I looked out toward the street. The blowing snow was so thick that the cars parked along the curb were not much more than shadows. The path was drifted and I deeply appreciated Margaret’s mom’s boots as I trudged out to the Mirage and brushed the snow off the front and rear windows. I opened the hatchback and checked for tire chains, although I wasn’t sure I’d know how to put them on if I found them. I didn’t, of course, and I doubted the tires were snow tires. I’d better get going before the roads became impassable. I thought of the switchbacks up the mountain and shuddered.
It wasn’t so bad in town, once I got out of the country club neighborhood and onto Bethany’s Main Street. As I drove past the
bank, I saw that the temperature had risen just above freezing, and there was enough traffic to melt the worst of the ice and turn the street-snow to a muddy brown slush. But the few pedestrians on the sidewalks were bent double against the wind, which was blowing the snow nearly horizontal and ripping thin white ribbons off roofs and drifts. Brave blooming tulips, azaleas, and forsythias shivered, the new leaves on the trees were heavy with snow, and several branches had already snapped. Spring was suffering a serious setback.
It was past lunchtime by now, and I thought I’d better get something to eat before I attempted the mountain, so I pulled off at Sam’s, the diner where I’d stopped for lunch the day before. Just the day before? Surely it had been at least six weeks ago. This time, I had a BLT and a side of coleslaw, neither of which taxed the cook’s skills. Coffee, too, figuring I could use the caffeine.
When I paid the check, I picked up three bags of banana chips for Claudia’s parrots. The fresh-faced blonde who had told me yesterday that she wasn’t crazy about snow so late in the season said the same thing again today. But I didn’t repeat what I’d said yesterday: “Snow would be a real treat for me.” I was done with snow.
Back at the car, I had to brush off the windshield again. Then I phoned Jenna and told her I was about to leave Bethany.
“It’s snowing like a sonofagun down here,” I said. “There’s already maybe four or five inches on the ground, with deeper drifting. How is it up there?”
Jenna’s voice was tinny and sounded so far away that she might be on another planet. “It’s a blizzard.” She sounded excited. “The lights keep going off and on. The county hasn’t plowed the road yet, but Joe has cleared the drive once already, and he’s got the emergency generator set up and ready to go. Looks like we’re going to need it.” She dropped her voice. “Did you see Jed? How is he?”
“He’s going to be all right.” I didn’t want to break the news of Amelia Scott’s suicide over the phone, and the rest of it was too complicated to go into. “There’s more. Tell you when I see you.” I glanced up. Through the gray-white curtain of snow, I glimpsed a grocery store on the corner. A very small garden tractor armed with a big snowplow was attempting without much success to clear away the snowdrifts between the cars in the parking lot. “Is there anything you need from town? Milk, bread?”
“We’ve got what we need,” Jenny said. Now she sounded urgent. “Just get yourself up here in one piece, China. Even on a good day, that road can be bad.”
Bad on a good day, my smarter self growled as I pulled out of Sam’s parking lot. And a couple of blocks farther on, when she saw the sign for the Hemlock Mountain Inn, she had a better idea.
Hey, instead of driving up that mountain, how about if we check into that comfy-looking B&B? We can kick back, look out the window, enjoy the snow, and find a nice place nearby for dinner. We can drive up the mountain tomorrow.” She began to coax. “Come on, China. Let’s do it. What do you say?
“No,” I muttered stubbornly. I hate it when part of me comes up with something that’s clearly better when the rest of me has already committed herself to something that isn’t. “It won’t be so bad. I just have to pay attention.”
But when I turned at the next left—the narrow two-lane that zigzagged up the mountain—I knew I should have said yes instead. The visibility couldn’t be more than twenty yards. The road hadn’t been plowed yet and while some patches were scoured bare by the wind, elsewhere the snow was bumper-deep and it was difficult to be sure that what I was driving on was actually road.
To make things worse, the Mirage was a front-wheel drive that hugged the pavement. Did it have enough clearance to plow through the deep stuff or would it stall out? Cell phone coverage was spotty on this road. If I got stuck, would I be able to get help?
And as I had noticed when I drove out of the Asheville airport, the car didn’t act like my stick-shift Toyota. I had no idea whether its variable transmission would have enough power to manage the steep grade and the drifts at the same time. I definitely didn’t want to get into a situation where the car lost power and slid off the mountain. That would be a killer.
And now, as the road snaked through the tunnel of trees, the daylight darkened into an eerie snow-filled twilight. The wind cranked up a couple of notches, pummeling the car first from one side, then the other, then straight ahead, the snow funneling directly at my windshield. At one point, a sixty-foot hemlock had lost its grip on the rocky soil and come down onto the road, leaving barely enough room for me to snake past. It was white-knuckle, adrenaline-fueled driving, and every now and then I had to remind myself to stop holding my breath or I was going to pass out.
My smarter self was on top of things, of course. Bet you wish you’d listened to the skinny kid with the John Lennon glasses, she snarked. You could be driving a four-by-four right now—more weight, more power, better traction. Think of that when you’re sliding off the mountain, why don’t you?
And as the wipers struggled to clear the clotting snow from the front and back windshields and I used Jenna’s mittens to wipe the fog off the inside, Ms. Know-It-All remarked significantly, A bigger vehicle would have better wipers. Bigger defroster, too, huh?
She also remembered odds and ends of advice she had picked up over the years and now offered in a running commentary.
Don’t jam the brake, just tap it gently. No sudden moves, now—easy does it.
No, that is not a bear over there, and even if he is, he’s not a problem unless he runs out in front of you. Keep your eyes on the road.
Accelerate slowly—no, no, SLOW, you idiot! And keep your eyes on the ROAD!
“Knock it off,” I muttered as I maneuvered around the second sharp dogleg, then sped up to tackle the steep grade that followed. But she wasn’t finished.
Don’t you know there’s nothing worse than accelerating on an icy hill? You’ll spin out and lose control. You need to get your speed up on the flat before you make the next corner and take on the grade.
Yeah, right. Well, if I drove this road every day, I would know when the switchbacks were coming, wouldn’t I? I would know whether the road flattened out or a hill loomed around the next blind corner.
But since I’d only driven it twice before, I had no clue—especially since I could barely see past the front bumper. I had to hold the speed down, which meant that as I climbed through one switchback and then another and the road got steeper, the car didn’t have the traction it needed. I knew it was going to stall, so I accelerated and the back tires spun and I started fishtailing.
Turn into the skid! my smarter self shrieked, now in full-throated panic. Turn into the skid, you dolt!
So I turned into the skid while my heart jumped into my throat and stayed there. My mouth was dry and my throat was parched. My knees and calves ached from the strain of managing the accelerator and the brake. But turning into the skid straightened me out and I could breathe again.
It had to be the longest twenty minutes of my life. But at last, through a curtain of blowing snow, I saw what I remembered as the last sharp switchback in the zig-zaggy road. Beyond it was a longish flat stretch and then the Hemlock House gatehouse.
I let out my breath in a rush. I’d made it.
• • •
The electricity was off when I got back but came on not long after and stayed on for the rest of the afternoon, which all three of us spent huddled in front of a blazing fire in the workroom, keeping warm.
Jenna had made a pot of hot chocolate for us, and I reported what had happened in Bethany that morning: my talk with the chief, our visit to Jed Conway in the hospital, the grisly find in Amelia Scott’s garage, and the conversation with Margaret Anderson. Some of it was a confirmation of what they already knew. The rest was news, and unsettling.
“Amelia shot Sunny?” Dorothea whispered incredulously, her eyes wide, her hand to her mouth. “But that was ruled a suicide!”
I nodded. “She must have wiped her prints off the gun and put it in Sunny’s hand. Sunny was an old woman with a terminal illness and a right-to-die supporter, so the suicide seemed to fit.”
It must have looked like such a sure thing that the sheriff hadn’t bothered to test for gunshot residue on Sunny’s hand. The only one who didn’t seem to accept it was Claudia Roth, who could live with the idea of suicide but couldn’t believe that Sunny would use a gun, and especially not that gun.
“And Amelia tried to kill Jed Conway, too?” Jenna asked, disbelieving.
“Yes. She thought that he stole the Herbal, sold it, and owed her half of the money—which she needed. Her real estate business was going under and she was about to lose her house. Jed said he thought she didn’t mean to shoot him, and he was probably right. Apparently, she heard that he wasn’t expected to make it through the night. That’s when she decided to put an end to it.”
“So hard to believe,” Dorothea murmured.
Jenna was looking excited. “Maybe that’s the reason for the ghost,” she said.
“Reason for the ghost?” Dorothea frowned. “What are you saying?”
“Sunny’s ghost. Maybe she hasn’t been able to leave this place because nobody knew the truth behind the way she died. Maybe now that the truth is out and people understand that she was murdered, she can rest in peace.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, remembering what Claudia had told me: that Sunny herself had claimed to see the ghost, which meant that it predated Sunny’s murder. “But I’m sure that Chief Curtis is going to want to talk to you two. The case is now in his hands, not the county sheriff’s, since Conway has admitted to fencing some of the library’s prints through his website and Scott confessed to being his accomplice.”
I turned to Jenna. “You would probably earn Chief Curtis’ undying gratitude if you would go to your computer, bring up Socrates.com, and make screenshots of Conway’s current listings. Then check to see if these correspond to items missing from this library. It’s possible that he and Amelia were pilfering other collections.” I didn’t say so out loud, but I thought it was possible that Margaret had been involved, as well. I wasn’t entirely convinced of her innocence.
Hemlock Page 24