by Anna Drake
***
Lester Potter opened his front door immediately upon my knock. Now, dressed in khakis and a blue oxford-cloth shirt, on one level he looked distinguished and confident and smug — rather like a well-aging film star. But from my perspective, he merely looked mean and deadly.
“Mrs. Langdon, right?” he asked.
“Mrs. Fox, actually,” I replied. “But you’re half right. Megan Langdon’s my daughter.”
“Charming woman.”
“Thank you.”
“ I hope you found the gerbil?”
At least he remembered one thing about me. “Indeed, we did. Thank you for asking,” I said.
“What can I do for you now, then?”
“I’m collecting donations for the library. As the high school principal, I’m sure that must be a cause dear to your heart.”
“Oh, indeed,” he said beaming. “Won’t you come in? I’ll write you a check.”
I stepped inside the entryway, which contained a massive carved staircase leading to the second floor. Potter stepped forward, leading me into the front parlor which was stuffed full of Victorian treasures: two walnut tables, several balloon-back chairs, a lovely settee upholstered in red velvet. Along the near wall, a magnificent walnut secretary stretched skyward, its drawers all sporting small, white-porcelain knobs.
Potter crossed to the unit, pulled forth a drawer, produced a checkbook. Leaning over the writing surface, he asked to whom he should write the check. I glanced down at my fact sheet, which I held in a white-knuckled grip before me. I licked my lips. “It says to make checks out to the Friends of the Library.”
He chuckled, “Of course.”
A woman came into the room. She had blonde hair, and a broad smile, and was not very tall. “Lester, where are your manners?” She glanced at me. “Please, won’t you sit down? Would you like some coffee? I just made a fresh batch. I’m Sadie Potter, by the way.” She stuck out her hand. I shook it.
“I’m Hetty Fox,” I explained. “I’m collecting donations on behalf of the library.”
“How wonderful of you.”
“Thank you, and as for the coffee, I’m fine. But, I was wondering, could I use your washroom?”
I’d decided to make my report to Oberton valid, I had to establish more than just being inside the house. I needed Potter to actually believe I’d seen whatever was turned up here. Asking to use the washroom was the only excuse I could come up with.
Sadie smiled at me. “Yes, of course. You’re more than welcome to use our facilities. Unfortunately our powder room down here is out of commission. You’ll have to go upstairs.”
Perfect.
She led me back to the entryway and pointed me up the stairway. “Second door on your left,” she chirped.
I scurried up the staircase and closed myself into the bathroom. I figured I only had to be able to claim I’d searched the house. With Andrew doing his duty, I did not actually have to do it. A fact for which I was tons grateful. Still, since I was here.... I opened the cabinet under the sink. Counted the number of toilet rolls left. Checked the cleaning supplies. Closed the door. There was a stack of towels to my right. I lifted one after another, searching between them to check for a gun. Found nothing. Opened the cabinet over the sink. Noted the kinds of prescriptions they had. Then, finally, content I’d given myself sufficient time, I flushed, washed, and departed.
Sadie was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairway. “This is the check,” she said, shoving it forward.
“Thanks for the loan of your washroom. I think all this excitement this morning caught up with me.”
She blinked. “What excitement?”
“The body. I found it.”
“Body?”
“I found a corpse hidden under an evergreen one door down from your house. You didn’t know?”
She looked stunned. “No. I drove our youngest daughter back to college yesterday. I only returned home late this morning.”
Lucky her. How I wished I could make a similar claim.
***
The county seat of Weaver County is about a twenty minute drive from Hendricksville, which isn’t all that long a trip. But this day the farm fields filled with corn and beans stretching skyward whizzed past my window. Telephone poles did likewise, but the highway still seemed to stretch on forever.
At last, I reached the Weaverton city limits. The town boasts a population of some twenty-thousand people. There were those who suspected the only way city fathers reached that exalted number was to include cats and dogs in the population count.
Either way, I pulled my car into the sheriff’s parking lot on Elm Street and took a deep breath. I didn’t know how I was going to convince Oberton that I had managed to track down the tennis shoes — or to explain about the gun which had turned up on an overhead shelf in the bedroom closet. I suspected he had honed his senses into a crack lie detector device over his years on the police force. Still, I climbed out of my car and set off on my mission determined to succeed.
The sheriff’s department was housed in a practical looking yellow-brick building, built all on one floor and topped with a brown roof. I pulled open the door and immediately came upon the front desk, where Alan Jessop was on duty. He glanced up from some paperwork he’d been sorting through. “Hetty, how you doing?”
The greeting told me I’d probably been in these offices at least once too often. “Hi, Alan. Is Detective Oberton in?”
“He is, but he’s terribly busy. Today’s homicide and all.” Hand gestures accompanied his words making it clear that people here were feeling a bit swamped.
“Will you ask him if he would meet with me, please? I have some news.”
“You haven’t solved this thing, have you?” he asked, suspiciously.
“I just need to speak with Oberton, that’s all.”
The sergeant never took his eyes from my face as he reached out, grabbed his phone, and rang his boss. “Sir, Hetty Fox is out in reception. Says she needs a word.”
He listened silently for a moment or two. “I know, sir. I told her. But she is insistent.”
He replaced the receiver. “Go on back. You know the way.”
The officer pushed the buzzer, which undid the lock. I swung open the railed barrier and stepped off down the hallway.
I found Oberton seated behind his desk, which was buried under stacks of paper. The detective did me the courtesy of standing when I walked into his room, which I found to be a charming, old-fashioned gesture. “Hetty, what’s dragged you all the way over here?”
“Well, I got to chatting with Megan after you left, and with my pushing her and all, which you hadn’t time to do earlier, I learned a fact that proved helpful.”
Oberton lowered his large frame back into his chair and pointed me toward a seat across from him. “Which is…?” he asked.
“It turns out one of her neighbors, a Lester Potter by name, worked at the high school with Mazor. Potter’s the principal there.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Anyway, I was out collecting donations for our library today. So I decided to stop by his house. Since he is an educator, I thought he might see a library as a cause he could endorse.”
Oberton’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Hetty, where are you going with this?”
“Well, I know how you folks have to follow all sorts of rules and such, so I thought I might lend you a hand and step past those sorts of restrictions.”
“And you did what?”
“I sort of poked around in his house.”
“With his permission?”
“With his wife’s.”
“Where did you go?”
“The bathroom. It was upstairs, so I took a stroll through their bedroom. And guess what I found?”
“I don’t know. What did you find?”
“A pair of Redeautte tennis shoes, size nine.”
His head jerked back. “How did you know about those?”
“I c
an’t recall.”
“If one of my men has loose lips….”
“Relax. Your men are fine. I doubt they’d tell me to turn around if I were headed straight for a black hole. But I have developed my own sources. Also know,” I continued, “in that same closet, on the overhead shelf, there’s a handgun. I don’t know what kind, I don’t know much about guns. But if I were you, I’d get a search warrant and go through his house. Pronto.”
I’d seen fish open and close their mouths more often than Oberton was presently doing, but not often.
***
That evening, after dinner, I settled into the living room. Blackie joined me, jumping into his basket. Andrew was floating in front of the window watching the stars show their first light. If he was like me, he was wondering how our effort to trap Potter had gone. We knew Oberton had acted quickly on our information. Megan had called shortly before dinner, telling us police had swarmed all over the Potter house.
I had listened with mixed feelings. I was pleased a killer had been arrested. But I couldn’t help but feel sorry for his wife. Sadie had struck me as a nice person. I’d thought about her through much of my meal.
Now, I switched on the lamp at my elbow and picked up my knitting.
“We’ve got company,” Andrew announced a few minutes later.
“Really? Who is it?”
“Oberton.”
And sure enough, the front door bell soon rang. I rose from my chair and admitted my favorite lawman.
“Evening, Hetty,” he said stepping through the doorway.
“Detective.”
He removed his hat and stood facing me.
“Won’t you have a seat?”
“Thank you.” His long legs quickly carried him to the couch.
I checked the spot Andrew had been occupying and was relieved to see that he had either departed or made himself invisible, although I suspected it was the latter. Blackie remained in his basket, head up, eyes glued on our visitor. “Can I get you some coffee?” I asked.
Oberton laughed. “No, thank you. If I drink any more of that stuff today, I won’t sleep til Christmas.”
I resumed my place in the chair. “What brings you my way, then?”
“It’s a courtesy call. My men and I appreciate the tip you shared with us today. I felt you’d like to know what we turned up as a result of your information.”
He hadn’t needed to do this. I had no business sticking my nose in his world and had probably overstepped myself. But I found the fact that he’d come to fill me in on what had happened very gratifying. “Thank you. This is kind. I must admit I’d been wondering how it had gone.”
“We found the shoes and the gun, right where you said they would be.”
“I am pleased.”
“So were we.” He twirled his hat in his hands. “Ah… so as to the rest of the story….”
“Yes, I’ve been wondering about that, too.”
“It’s a sad one. It turns out Mazor was blackmailing Potter. The janitor had seen the principal one night with a young girl, doing things he shouldn’t be doing with a student.”
“Ah… that’s what was going on.”
“Regrettably, yes. Anyway, apparently the financial demands were getting to be too much for Potter. It all jives. We have the bank statements. There’s a clear record of money going into and out of the accounts of those two men. There’s no question about the blackmail. Plus, Potter has confessed.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yeah, it will save the county some money. The county board members always appreciate that fact. Anyway, as you probably suspected, Mazor came over to the Potter house last night with a demand for more money. Potter’s wife was out of town. I guess, it all suddenly seemed like too much for Potter. So he grabbed his gun from his desk drawer and shot Mazor. Then he panicked. He said he was terrified someone might have heard the shot."
"I'd wondered about that."
"Of course, Mrs. Rasmussen’s hard of hearing," Oberton continued. "And the Benchleys were out on the town. Potter might even have gotten away with it, if he’d been able to dump the body in some remote location. But his car was in the garage having the brakes fixed. And his wife had used hers to drive their daughter back to college. Best he could think of to do was to get the corpse out of his house and hidden as quickly as he could. Even if it wasn't all that far.”
I shook my head. “The body would never have gone undiscovered so near to traffic and neighbors.”
“I think he knew that. But this wasn’t a murder that was planned. He’d acted on impulse and had to deal with what happened next as best he could.” Oberton cackled. “He said he was terrified this morning, when he saw you out poking around his front yard.”
“I can imagine. Leave it to Chaos to mess up a man’s plans.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s the name of Hugh’s gerbil.”
“Oh.” Oberton laughed and rose from the couch. “Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to head home.”
“Not at all. I’m stunned that you took the time to come by and see me.”
“I’m not going to tell you I’m entirely pleased with your poking your nose in police business, but at least you’ve been helpful so far.”
I walked him to the doorway. “Good night, sir.”
“Good night, Hetty,” he said, returning his hat to his head.
“Well…,” Andrew offered, as he watched Oberton pull his car from the driveway. “How about that?”
“Yup. You did us proud, Andrew.” He’d also taken another step toward proving himself real. I could never have dreamed up the location of those shoes and that gun on my own.
Andrew turned away from the window. “You know, I think we make one fine detective team.”
I clucked and asked, “We? Who are you including in this little group?”
“You and me, of course.”
I picked up my knitting. “And not my cat?”
“No way. If I had my way, that creature would….”
Blackie turned his head toward Andrew, laid his ears back, and let fly one really magnificent hiss.
THE END
Author's note: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this story. As for me, I’m a former journalist, who lives in a small house in a small town in rural Illinois.
To learn when new books in my mystery series are available, please follow my blog, like me on Facebook, or follow me on my Amazon Author Page.
Other Books by This Author:
Bones & Boxes, a Hetty Fox Cozy Mystery
Death Among the Roses, a Melanie Hart Cozy Mystery
The Case of the Missing Elf, a Melanie Hart Cozy Mystery
Other titles may be found at my website.
Coming soon:
Old Bones, a Hetty Fox Cozy Mystery