Bernadine Fagan - Nora Lassiter 02 - Murder in the Maine Woods

by Bernadine Fagan

“I didn’t think you would.”

  I wasn’t sure how to handle Vivian. What would those Law and Order folks do? Or the CSI or NCIS guys? Great-Aunt Ida collected DVDs of old crime shows and played them in the kitchen every morning. I was becoming familiar with them, and a closet-fan of a few.

  I stayed silent, hoping Vivian would continue. Finally, she said, “Another dog, little Nutmeg, was poisoned. She died in the early hours of the morning.”

  My heart went out to her. “I’m so sorry, Vivian.”

  “Buster did it,” she said before I had a chance to ask what she thought.

  “You have proof?” I asked.

  “My gut tells me the truth.”

  Oh, boy.

  “Did you confront Buster?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You must have been very angry when you found Nutmeg.”

  Vivian stood up, her face pinched with anger. “Are you working for me or the cops?”

  I had given her the benefit of the doubt and she was accusing me. “Why would I be working for the cops?” I asked calmly, feeling my allergies about to kick in as I picked white cat hairs off my black skirt.

  The touch of hysteria in her voice alerted the troops. Like a clarion call to arms, four bouncy Pomeranians came tearing through the house, barking up a storm. At me.

  Two cats, acting as backup, came sashaying in, snooty as all get-out. They rubbed against my legs, leaving markers, I suppose. Can cats sense when a person is allergic? The dogs pranced all over my feet, jumped at my legs. Vivian did not shoo them away. I tried to pretend nothing was happening. I sneezed twice.

  “Do you have a tissue?” I asked politely, holding the damp tissue to my nose.

  Ignoring me, or maybe she just didn’t hear above the racket, Vivian looked out the window. While her back was turned, I blotted my nose. Then I opened the tissue, held it with both thumbs and index fingers like a sheet pinned on a clothesline and fluttered it, hoping by some miracle it would dry. How low I had fallen since my sophisticated days in the city such a short time ago.

  “Why are you asking me all these questions? Do you think I had something to do with his death, Nora?”

  I was annoyed about the tissue. She heard me, just like she heard me when I called to her earlier this morning. I was now positive. It didn’t take a summa cum laude detective to figure she was the one running through the woods with a convenient attack of deafness.

  “I saw you running away.”

  There, that was plain enough.

  I stood, felt a sneeze working it’s way up, paused and put the damp tissue to my nose. Four-three-two-one … detonation.

  Aaa-chooo.

  The dogs jumped back.

  Aaa-chooo.

  “Did you?” I asked, discreetly blotting my nose with the damp, no, the soggy tissue. Pretending it was on a clothesline had not worked.

  “Did I what? Kill Buster?”

  “I didn’t say anyone killed him.”

  Aaa-chooo.

  “It’s what you implied.”

  “Why were you there?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t.”

  She stood and headed for the door, Sugar Bottom, Button Nose, Tootles and the Flatulent One all at her heels, forming a pompous parade, curly tails bobbing away. The cats leaped to the window sill to watch.

  “Since he’s dead, I guess the case is over. Send me your bill.”

  I sneezed three more times, rapidly, and wiped my nose with tissue remnants as I followed the line of march. Low didn’t begin to cover how far I’d come in my fall down the ladder of chic. I was going to find that lace-tatted hanky Great-Grandma Evie left me and carry it always. That and a box of tissues would help. I decided I’d get several different brands, line them up and sample each. I’d choose the softest and stock up.

  At the door, I made one more try. “Vivian, can’t we talk?”

  “Talked enough for one day,” she replied, looking somewhere over my head.

  I expected her to say shoo as I went out the door, but she gave a humph instead. And I stayed in Maine to hunt for her dogs’ killer? Try to be nice, and this is the thanks you get.

  Once in the truck, I grabbed a roll of paper towels I’d left on the passenger seat to clean the windshield, and blew my nose. Super absorbent trumped big and bulky by a mile.

  In her driveway I made my famous three-point turn in about nine maneuvers, not caring that I flattened more flower stalks, not caring that she was watching, probably with a huge smirk on her round face, and most of all, not caring that the dogs in the pen were creating noise pollution, carrying on like their territory was under siege by a Delta Force unit.

  If I didn’t get lost, and speeded a bit, I should be home in about half an hour, maybe forty minutes. Everything was so far apart in Maine.

  The sun dropped below the horizon when I pulled in front of Great-Aunt Ida’s pale yellow Victorian with the blue gingerbread trim, my home, for now. I loved it in a way I’d never loved any place I had lived.

  My apartment in Manhattan was the exact opposite—modern and sophisticated with designer touches, lots of white leather and black fabric with a sprinkling of color here and there. Considering that, it was surprising that I felt so at home here where the furnishings harked back to a time when lace and large prints held sway. I loved the creak of the porch swing as it shifted in the breeze; loved the chipped paint on the railing and the clumps of withered mums in the garden.

  I noticed we had company. Great-Aunt Hannah’s muscle car, the ‘65 teal blue Pontiac GTO that had been her husband’s pride and joy, was in the driveway, parked in the birdbath dish she had obviously knocked off it’s pedestal. Before he had died she promised him she’d keep it always.

  It didn’t surprise me that Hannah was here, or that she’d crashed into the birdbath. Great-Aunt Agnes probably came with her. My three aunts were a team, women who had known each other forever, were in constant contact, and for some reason loved me like crazy, a combination that’s hard to resist. I loved them back.

  The door opened as I reached for it. Shaking her head in dismay, Aunt Ida grabbed me and pulled me close for a hug. I think I’ve gotten more hugs since I arrived here than I have in my whole life. My mother was not a hugger and neither was my father.

  “How awful for you, finding Buster dead.”

  “Oh, indeed, yes,” Hannah said, her voice filled with sympathy as she flipped her red shawl around her petite frame in an artful, well-practiced move as she came down the hall. With her flair for the dramatic gesture, Great-Aunt Hannah should have been a model or an actress.

  “Our poor Nora,” big Aunt Agnes boomed, shuffling down the hall behind Hannah.

  After hugs all around we went into the front room.

  “Start at the beginning and don’t leave a thing out. We can take it, every nasty detail. We’ve all watched the CSI shows,” Ida declared when we were finally seated.

  Gray heads bobbed in agreement.

  “Before you start, Nora, I notice you’re wearing a dark sweater. You should wear a brighter color when you’re near the woods at this time of year. Hunting season, you know,” Hannah said. “Now tell us all about your morning.”

  I gave a detailed account of the scene and finished up by saying, “There’s one more detail that you have to promise to keep quiet for a while.”

  “Absolutely. Tell us,” Ida said as Agnes made a zipping motion across her lips, and Hannah leaned forward.

  “I may have seen Vivian running away before we found Buster, but I haven’t mentioned it to Nick yet. I’ll tell him when I see him. I wanted to check with Vivian first. She got angry when I asked if she’d been to Buster’s earlier.”

  “Oh my,” Agnes said. “You mean you think there’s a chance she murdered him?”

  “He probably died a natural death,” I said.

  “Probably?” Ida asked, her hands gripping the raspberry-colored cabbage roses imprinted on the slip-covered arms of the chair. “You mean you think Vivian
may have murdered him?”

  “I don’t think so, but I felt she was hiding something. Maybe she has knowledge about his death that she didn’t want to tell me.”

  “Remember what we saw,” Agnes said, lifting her brows meaningfully.

  I looked to Hannah who hadn’t said a word, but was shaking her head, her expression difficult to read. Finally, she said, “That was years ago, maybe five or six years.”

  “What, what, what? Tell me.” I demanded.

  “I don’t think it was that long ago. Less, I think,” Ida said.

  “A lot less,” Agnes boomed. “It was the same year I had my gallbladder out. I’m sh-ur of it.”

  “That was only three years ago,” Ida said.

  “I’ll have to think about the timing,” Hannah said.

  “We don’t like to gossip,” Agnes said, reaching for a wheat cracker on the tray. “That would be gossip, wouldn’t it? The pastor gave a nice homily this Sunday past about the evils of gossip. What I heard of it before I dozed off was impressive.”

  “I’m not sure this qualifies as gossip,” Ida said, wrinkling her brow.

  “Gossip?” I questioned in a calm voice that belied my impatience.

  “Did you see any blood?” Hannah asked. “You never mentioned blood.”

  “No blood that I could see. I would have told you. Now, please share the gossip.”

  “So bullets and knives are out,” Hannah said to Ida and Agnes with a decisive nod. “Unless the blood was hidden by the covers. Were there covers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could be a gun,” Ida said.

  “A bun might do it,” Agnes said. “Did you taste those buns she made for the pot luck supper? Even I couldn’t eat them. I think she used motor oil instead of canola oil. Imagine the headlines: Murder by Bun.”

  “A gun,” Hannah corrected. “Maybe she used a gun. You’re not wearing your hearing aid.”

  Agnes tilted her head. “A gun. Well, that would have been my first choice, too. Certainly easier than cooking.”

  “She’d never use a knife,” Ida said. “Too close. Too iffy.”

  Did they see me? Was I not sitting here?

  “Natural causes then,” Hannah decided. “Most likely a heart attack or stroke. So it’s safe to tell Nora.”

  All three looked at me. Finally.

  FOUR

  “It happened about three years ago,” Hannah began, adjusting her scarf. “Agnes is right about that. It was before her gall bladder operation. I remember. We left our senior citizens’ meeting early because she suffered one of her acid reflux attacks.”

  “I still say it was that horrible fried chicken. Must have been soaked in fat,” Ida said.

  Agnes nodded in agreement.

  “We saw Buster kissing a woman outside the church after choir practice,” Hannah said.

  “What fire was that? I don’t remember any fire.” Agnes shook her head. “Believe-you-me, I would have remembered that, gall bladder attack or not.”

  “They were under the big weeping beech next to the church. Imagine. Doing that right next to the church. And his wife still alive,” Hannah said.

  “Adultery. Near God’s house. It’s a wonder the tree wasn’t struck by lightning and didn’t crash down on their heads,” Ida said. “They thought no one could see them, all those draping branches and leaves to hide them. We just happened along.”

  “Did lightning start the fire?” Agnes asked.

  “Choir,” Hannah corrected. “Choir, not fire.”

  “Maybe it was his wife?” I suggested.

  “Oh, no. Not his wife,” Ida said, heading for the hall. She stopped in the doorway. “Too short. This woman only reached his shoulder. No more. His wife was tall, almost his height. Besides, his wife wasn’t in the choir. We’re not sure who it was.”

  “It was dark and those branches were in the way,” Agnes said. “I wanted to move closer and you both stopped me.”

  “We don’t abide snooping,” Hannah said, lifting her chin a notch.

  “We don’t gossip, either,” Ida said.

  Agnes smirked and reached for another cracker. “We did want to snoop, though. And I don’t know about you two, but I wanted to gossip.”

  “But you didn’t and that’s what’s important,” Ida said.

  “We’ve never shared this with a soul,” Hannah said.

  “This happened three years ago? Not much help,” I said.

  They all shrugged. Then Hannah said, “Who knows how long he carried on after that. All we can say is it was probably someone in the choir. And his wife was still alive at the time.”

  We all headed to the kitchen. The incredible aroma of warm honeyed ham and simmering baked beans wafted down the hall pointing the way. For one crazy moment I closed my eyes and let my nose lead me. Seconds later, common sense prevailed. I caught myself before I bumped into Hannah, who was behind Agnes who was behind Ida.

  Everyone helped get the food on the table.

  “I don’t use salt pork in my beans anymore,” Ida announced as she set a bowl of beans on the table. “Just so you know.”

  Agnes made a throaty noise of disapproval. “What’s gotten into you, Ida? I never heard of such a thing. I probably won’t like them. Baked beans need salt pork and that’s that.”

  Hannah shook her head. “You’re turning into quite the risk taker, Ida.”

  “I’ll try them anyway,” Agnes said, “but only a few.”

  “Tell me what you know about Buster,” I said, filling the water glasses.

  Hannah set the salad down and said, “For years he was wrapped up in his river tours, his hunting and fishing and such. Worked at the All-Season Wilderness Lodge and Campground. In the past few years he did a lot for the veterans. I don’t know as Ray approved of him using the camp facilities for them. There was some talk.”

  “What facilities?” I asked.

  “I think he took a group of veterans white water rafting and used camp boats. I don’t see the harm. I heard they weren’t being used at the time anyway.”

  “How about Lenny?” I asked.

  “He plays in front of a computer all day,” Ida said.

  “Plays?”

  “He does accounting for Rhonda,” Hannah explained as she rearranged the bowls on the table to make room for the bowl of macaroni and cheese that Ida held. “And for a few other businesses around here.”

  “What did you use in place of the salt pork?” Agnes asked.

  “A little olive oil and a bit of pancetta,” Ida said

  as she filled a small basket with rolls.

  “Who’s Rhonda?” I asked.

  “Rhonda Racanelli. She and her husband Ray run the wilderness camp. Well, mostly Rhonda runs it. Ray only works there when they’re very busy ‘cause he’s the pharmacist in town,” said Hannah.

  “That must keep him busy,” I said.

  “What are you going to do now, Nora?” Agnes asked. “Wasn’t Buster Verney your prime suspect in the dog poisoning?”

  “He was. So I guess the case is closed.” I paused. “Vivian will be satisfied now that Verney’s gone. I can return to the city.”

  I should return. I know that.

  We all took a seat.

  “You could take another case,” Ida said.

  I shook my head. “No more cases. I need a full-time job with regular pay, something in the computer analyst field. Much as I’d love to stay with you guys, I have to head back home.”

  All three stared at me. Agnes’ hand flew to her heart; Ida grabbed the edge of the table; Hannah, strong Hannah, merely studied me.

  “What are you going to do about the property Great-Grandma Evie left you?” Hannah asked. “You’ll have to continue to pay taxes on it, you know.”

  “I’ll sell it. Fifty acres should be easy to sell.”

  “You can’t sell to an outsider.” Agnes warned. “Remember.”

  “Lassiters keep their land in the family,” Ida said with a nod to affirm he
r statement.

  “Tradition. An unwritten family law,” Hannah added.

  “Yes, I’ll sell to someone in the family.”

  With all the Lassiters in Silver Stream that should be a piece of cake. There were cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces galore. I don’t think I’ve met all of them.

  “Remember what Great-Grandma Evie asked you to do, Nora,” Hannah reminded.

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “She wanted the impossible. But I think my mother will never come back up here and make peace with the family. And my brother Howie’s not looking good on that front either.”

  In between cleaning and packing for my return trip to New York, I spent the next week calling relatives and telling them that the fifty acres of land I inherited from Great-Grandma Evie were for sale. Everyone I spoke to said they’d get back to me if they were interested, or knew anyone in the family who was. A lot of wishy-washiness going on, I thought.

  A shocker arrived in the mailbox on Thursday, a tax bill with my name on it. This, plus the rent on my apartment, would make my meager savings a memory. Wonderful. I needed to get back to New York City, and get a real job, fast.

  By Friday, with no takers for the property, I was feeling just a tiny bit sad that my time in Silver Stream, Maine, home of my birth, home of the Lassiter clan since Jed Lassiter founded the town in 1842, was almost up.

  I was going home tomorrow.

  I called my friend Lori in New York, and she told me she’d sent out my resume to thousands of firms this past week. Probably closer to ten or so. Lori exaggerates.

  I called Ida’s oil burner guy about the hot water. He said he’d be by when he had the chance. Might not be till next week or the week after. I figured he might schedule this place by next spring.

  On my final Maine morning as Ida finished ladling scrambled eggs onto my plate, the phone rang. I had the strangest feeling she shouldn’t answer it. I almost told her not to, but how silly would that have sounded.

  Ida listened for a moment, her face a mask of alarm. “Stop crying,” I heard her say in a soothing voice. “Calm down. I’m sure Nora can help you.”