I was about to call Bruce and tell him I had other plans, but my hand stopped an inch above the receiver. He was very attractive, I remembered, even if he was almost as old as my father. And I certainly hadn't had anybody else ask me for a date. Unless I counted Haley Haley, and I didn't. If I showed up with Bruce at Community Concert, a place where everybody who was anybody in Lickin Creek society was sure to be, the word would finally get out that I was not engaged to Garnet Gochenauer. That would save me from having to do a lot of explaining when he came back for his sister's wedding. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea to keep the date Ethelind had made for me with Bruce Laughenslagger.
A body found at Morgan Manor. The corpse's bride-to-be discovered soon afterward. And now, Maribell Morgan, a sick old lady, had disappeared from a nursing home. There had to be a connection. I needed to find out what it was.
But before I worked on that problem, there was something else I had to clear up. I made a stop at a convenience store where I purchased a copy of the Hagerstown Morning Herald, then continued south and pulled into the truck stop before nine, practically the middle of the night for me. The Church on the Go was still there, although somehow I'd almost expected it to have vanished. It seemed deserted. The back doors were tightly closed, and no music rang from the little steeple. A new sign on the side of the truck announced that the church would be participating in the Venison Ministry in the fall. I pounded on the driver's-side door, and after a minute or two, Haley's face filled the window.
At first he looked confused, then taken aback when he recognized me. His frown was quickly replaced by a broad grin, and the door swung open.
"Come on up," he said, extending a hand. I had to accept his assistance since I could barely reach my leg up to the floor of the cab. He hauled as I jumped, and we tumbled together into the front seat.
I sat up quickly, trying to regain my poise, and lost it again when I realized Haley was wearing nothing but a pair of plaid boxer shorts.
"Black Watch," I blurted out, then regretted it. I really didn't care what pattern his underwear was.
His blank expression told me he didn't know what I was talking about, and for that I was grateful.
"Coffee?" he asked.
I nodded, and he reached into the cubicle behind us and retrieved a large steel thermos.
"Only got one cup," he said, as he poured. "Hope you don't mind sharing."
After we'd done the coffee ritual, Haley said, "I'm real happy you're here, but I'm wondering why."
I searched for a shred of courage, found it, and said, "I want to know where Vonzell Varner is."
"What makes you think I'd know that?"
"I'm not an idiot, Haley. You've been stalking me in a green van you said you borrowed from a friend."
"I already done told you I wasn't stalking you. I was only watching over you to keep you safe."
"You were in my bedroom. Looking through my underwear drawer."
"That's because I wanted you to know just how vulnerable you really are."
I decided to drop that conversation and return to the original subject. "You have been driving a green van just like the one Varner stole from a car dealer in Maryland last week. Only you said you borrowed it from a friend. You also said you'd done time in Graterford Prison when Varner was there. To me, the connection is obvious; Varner is the friend. I'm just trying to understand why a man of God like you would protect a slimeball like him."
"It's Graterford SCI," Haley corrected. "State Correctional Institute, not prison. And don't forget Genesis four: nine, `Am I my brother's keeper?"'
"I don't care what the prison is called. You're avoiding the subject, which is where is Vonzell Varner? And I'd say if Vonzell is your brother, you are not doing a very good job of keeping him."
"I did know Vonzell," Haley admitted. "We went to AA meetings together at Graterford. That's where I found God, you know"
I sighed. "You told me that story. What about Vonzell?"
"He repented, Tori. He fell on his knees and begged forgiveness. He wanted to atone for all his sins. Jesus said, `Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than ninety-nine just persons which need no repentance."'
"Obviously, he has had a relapse."
"`Judge not, that ye be not judged.' Matthew seven: one."
"Didn't you hear what he did to his wife yesterday?"
"I didn't hear nothing. What happened?" Haley's voice was cold and flat.
"He beat her badly, kidnapped her, drenched her with maple syrup, and tied her up on top of a giant anthill. She would have died if I hadn't come along when I did. Here. You can read about it on the front page of the paper." He caught the newspaper I tossed at him and quickly scanned the article.
His face and chest turned red, then faded to a ghostly bluish white. "`God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.... "'
"Haley, prayer isn't going to stop him."
"`The courage to change the things I can..."'
"Tell me where he is. Before he does something worse."
"`And the wisdom to know the difference."'
"Haley?"
"You have to believe me, Tori, I don't know where he is. I'd tell you if I did."
I had to be satisfied with that.
"Any chance you'd go out with me again?" he asked, as I climbed out of the cab. "I think we could be friends if we got to know each other better."
"Haley. The only thing I want from you is Vonzell Varner, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey."
Back in Lickin Creek, I parked behind the drugstore and looked over the embankment at the place where I'd found Wilbur Eshelman's body. Whoever had shot him had had to be standing close to where I was now I turned around and stared at the backs of the Victorian buildings. Most of them, I knew, had been chopped up into apartments, and many of those apartments had windows overlooking the parking lot and the creek.
Surely someone had been drawn to a window by the sound of gunfire. There was a good chance that a witness to Wilbur's murder was looking down upon me right now.
An hour later, I'd visited more than a dozen spacious apartments, reminders of the days when wealthy shopkeepers lived above their businesses. But nobody admitted to seeing anything. Yes, many said they'd heard a sound that could have been a shot, Friday evening around six-fifteen or six-thirty, the dinner hour, but everyone living near the square had become so used to hearing firecrackers being shot off to scare away crows that nobody had thought anything of it. It had not been a sound that would have drawn anybody away from the table.
At the last apartment, an elderly woman told me Luscious had asked the same questions right after the shooting and wanted to know why I was bothering her again. I was glad to hear Luscious was on the job, but I also was slightly irritated that he hadn't shared his knowledge with me. It would have saved me a lot of time and embarrassment.
I walked to the Chronicle office in the next block and checked my box for assignments. When P.J. came in it was afternoon, and I was finished.
"I understand you've got a date for Community Concert tonight," she said, with a knowing grin.
"How did you know..." My voice faded away, as I recalled the infamous Lickin Creek Grapevine.
"No magic. I had lunch with Ethelind, and she told me. Since you're going, would you please take notes and write a review of the performance? It'll save me from having to sit through it."
"I don't mind," I said. I was rather excited about going. Community Concert tickets were sold in advance, during a one-week period each spring, and somehow I hadn't known they were on sale until too late to buy one. This was another thing that only native Lickin Creekers seemed to know about. Tonight was the first of this season's four concerts, and it would also be the first I'd had the opportunity to attend.
When I went home to get ready, I found a box on the kitchen table addressed to me. Curious, Ethelind hung over me while I sliced through the packing tape with a steak k
nife and found ten copies of my new book, The Albert Einstein Horror Ship, sent by my publisher. I should have been excited. Seeing your book in print for the first time is considered by most authors to be a thrill akin to giving birth, but in this case, after all that had happened recently, it seemed anticlimactic. I let Ethelind take a book out, closed the box, and went upstairs to change for the concert.
Twenty-One
r
Since I really didn't care what Bruce Laughenslagger thought of me, I hadn't planned to wear anything special for my date, but while I was showering I thought about the people who were going to see me with him and realized I needed to make an impact. I should wear something that would show the townsfolk I wasn't pining away for a lost love. Therefore, I pulled out the black cocktail dress I'd purchased about a year ago at a shop in the Village called Gently Used. The shop keeper hinted it had previously been owned by a celebrity and had been worn only once, to the Tony Awards. It was low-cut and sparkly, and I knew it was going to make me stand out at the concert tonight.
Bruce had left word he'd pick me up at six-thirty for the seven o'clock concert, but he'd warned me not to eat much dinner since we'd be going to a party afterwards.
While Ethelind fluttered around me, I ate the Lebanon bologna sandwich she'd fixed "to tide me over." When the front door bell rang, I thought Ethelind was going to burst with excitement. "You can't wear that jacket, not with that dress. You look just beautiful. He's going to fall head-over-heels for you. Don't trip on those high heels, now. The carpeting in the auditorium isn't all that great."
Bruce pursed his lips and whistled silently when I opened the door. "You look as pretty as a big-racked buck," he said, and I took that to be a compliment. After helping me into my coat, or rather Ethelind's velvet evening wrap from Harrod's, he took my arm and gallantly escorted me to his SUV.
"Up you go," he said cheerfully, as I stood on my tiptoes and tried to lift my rear end up to the seat. One of my shoes fell off in the process, and he retrieved it and handed it to me.
"Just like Cinderella," he said. "Only there's no surprise over who the princess is because I saw you lose it."
The high school was only a five-minute drive away from Moon Lake, but it took about ten minutes for Bruce to find a parking spot, and another five minutes to hike from the side street to the high school. People were just beginning to file into the auditorium. I looked in vain for a coatroom, then realized I was the only one there with an evening wrap, so I slipped it off, draped it over one arm, and fell into line next to Bruce.
I sensed people staring and knew the dress was getting the attention it deserved.
It was a good thing Bruce was holding my arm, for the carpet in the auditorium was indeed treacherous. We eventually found two empty seats on the aisle near the center of the vast room and sat down.
Tonight's performance was by a very large brass band from Chicago. It alternated patriotic music with jazz and occasionally threw in a Sousa march, and before long I had the headache of the century.
"Isn't it great?" Bruce asked, as we were swept into the outer hall for intermission. "You don't hear music like that every day in Lickin Creek."
Thank God for that, I thought as I nodded and dug through my purse until I found two Tylenol. "I'll be right back," I said, and set off in search of a drinking fountain.
The concert finally dragged to an earsplitting conclusion, and the band received an enthusiastic standing ovation from the audience, which was about half the size it had been before the intermission.
After a silent ride, I was shocked when Bruce pulled into the parking lot behind the Benjamin Koon Funeral Home.
"Are we in the right place?" I asked.
Bruce chuckled. "I wouldn't lead you astray, Tori. It's a tradition to have the post-concert parties here. Lots of room and plenty of parking. What more could you ask for?"
"A party without dead people would be nice," I said.
Goldie Koon, wife of the owner, greeted us at the front door, took my wrap, and murmured that I looked lovely. I caught a glimpse of myself in a pier mirror and thought, too, that I looked pretty darn good. Especially compared to most of the other women there, who wore plain cotton sundresses.
There were two large and lofty public rooms on either side of the front hall, which I knew from the house tour were usually used for viewings and services. Tonight the folding chairs were gone, and in the room to my right a long table sagged under the weight of the party fare. Beef roasts, turkeys, hams, and oyster casseroles vied with salads, Jell-O molds, and pasta dishes.
A bar had been set up in the room on the other side of the hall, and men clustered around it. Bruce pushed his way through the throng and emerged a few minutes later with drinks, Scotch for him, white wine for me. If he'd bothered to ask what I wanted, he would have been carrying two Scotches.
He led me through an archway at the back of the hall that opened into the family's private quarters. It hardly seemed possible, but here the rooms were even larger than out front. Despite the summer heat, gas logs burned in marble fireplaces in every room.
As with most gatherings, at least half the attendees were crowded into the kitchen. We pushed in, and I saw Greta, Garnet's sister, staring at me in astonishment. I waved and kept moving.
After introducing me to a balding gentleman with a smile that spread over his chin but didn't quite reach his eyes, Bruce excused himself to "look for the little boys' room." I watched him walk away, thinking he had a great build for a man his age. If he wouldn't use such corny expressions, he'd be darn near perfect.
The gentleman whose name I hadn't caught quickly exhausted his repertoire of cocktail chatter and moved away, leaving me to either stand awkwardly alone or search for a group to join. I didn't have to stand alone for long, because Greta was suddenly at my side.
"I'm so surprised to see you here," she said. "How come you didn't buy your Community Concert ticket from me?"
"I didn't buy one from anybody, Greta. I came with somebody."
"Not Bruce Laughenslagger? I saw you walk in with him. I thought maybe you'd met up with him in the parking lot. It's certainly nice of him to take you under his wing while Garnet's away." She stood back and studied me as if seeing me for the first time. "That's not what you're planning on wearing to my wedding, is it?"
Preparing to defend my almost-new designer dress, I nodded. "Why?" I asked.
"Because it's..." She paused as if struggling for words, and I cringed as I waited. She frowned, and then her blue-green eyes, so like Garnet's, twinkled. "Because it's so pretty, everybody will be looking at you instead of me." She grinned broadly to show me she was joking. "Ooops. Buchanan's been cornered by Bob Higgins. Bob's always looking for free legal advice. I'd better go rescue him."
I wandered from one group to another, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't be too annoying to people. After offering a few non sequiturs, I realized I'd be wise to keep my mouth shut and listen.
The conversations didn't vary much. Other than how wonderful tonight's concert had been, there were three subjects: the house tour, Mr. Eshelman's murder, and the discovery of the bodies of Lickin Creek's long-lost lovers. Of the three topics, Rodney and Emily seemed to be most popular. Despite the lack of any real information in the newspaper, the Grapevine had done its job because everyone knew about Rodney being found in the cave, disappearing, and eventually turning up in Funkhauser's tire pile.
I inched forward, glass in hand, determined smile on my face, and pushed my way into a clutch of people who all stopped talking as soon as they noticed me. "Please don't stop on my account," I said. "Just pretend I'm not here."
They took me at my word and resumed their conversation, which happened to be about Rodney Mellott and Emily Rakestraw.
"It's obvious Rodney killed Emily," offered one woman.
"Sure he did, then he walled himself up inside the cave, and stabbed himself in the back until he died," another said. "Don't make me laugh."
/> "He couldn't have done it," a man said. "Rodney disappeared first."
"He could have been hiding, waiting for just the right time." The first woman wasn't about to give up.
"I think Emily killed Rodney, then committed suicide because she felt so guilty" This was from someone who had just joined the group.
"By climbing into a trunk and having someone else padlock it? Give me a break." I couldn't tell who said this.
"Maybe somebody killed them both."
That was the first thing that made any sense.
As if there was a signal I couldn't hear, the members of the group turned away from each other and formed new groups. I wandered from one to another trying to find an opening, and as I passed a group dominated by Ben Koon, I heard him say something that drew me in. "She wasn't really dressed in the wedding gown, you see. That was tossed into the trunk with her. What she was wearing was white shorts, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes. I'd say the young lady was just leaving for a tennis date or returning from one."
"Did you have an opportunity to see this for yourself?" I asked.
Ben turned and glared at me as if wondering why I'd been allowed into his house. "Of course I did. The coroner brought both bodies here. Believe it or not, Emily's body is still in the trunk. I'll prepare them for burial when the police give me the go-ahead."
"Can I see them?"
Several people looked shocked and backed away from me as if I had a loathsome disease. Others merely stared curiously at me, as if wondering whether I really was the big city pervert I was rumored to be.
"There's no harm in taking you down," Ben said. "Let me just grab a drink first."
What he grabbed was a nearly full bottle of champagne. He picked up a glass, then turned back and picked up a second one. "Let's go," he said.
I now knew that looks couldn't really kill, because if they could, Goldie Koon's look would have taken us both out. Ben acted as if he hadn't noticed and led the way to the front of the building where the public rooms were. There, in the back of the front hall, hidden behind a velvet drape, was a steel door, which Ben unlocked and held open. The stairwell was well lighted, but the circular staircase was the scary kind that causes vertigo because the steps and risers are made of steel mesh you can see through.
5 Death, Bones, and Stately Homes Page 21