This was almost too much for me to watch. If it wasn’t for my curiosity about what Livy thought she saw the day Joshua was killed, I would’ve left. Instead, I took a deep breath and tried to be patient. “Tell us what you saw, please, Livy. We all want to help.”
“As I was saying, we were strolling through the Village when we saw Roger Trent slipping away from behind Wicked Weaves. He looked right at us, then put his head down and crossed the street to his glass shop.”
“Why was this mysterious?” Chase wondered.
“He was right where we found the body a few minutes later. If we wouldn’t have walked up the alley, we wouldn’t have seen anything. But Roger knows we saw him there and that we’ve realized he killed that poor man.”
“Just because he was there doesn’t mean anything,” I argued with her. “His shop is right across the street. He was probably walking around.”
“We might have believed that except today, someone followed us back to the castle. We barely made it inside before he pounced on us.”
“What made you think it was Roger?” Chase played with one of Livy’s snuff boxes that were on the table beside him.
“What about this?” She held up a blue polishing cloth. “This is the same kind of cloth Roger uses after he makes something.”
I had to admit she was right. When I was watching him at his shop, he had a dozen of them on his worktable. “But this really doesn’t prove anything. He walks around the Village. One of the cloths could’ve gotten lost.”
“Jessie’s right,” Chase agreed. “We have to have more proof before we accuse anyone of trying to hurt you. Especially since we have no proof he killed Joshua.”
Livy cried prettily into her lace hankie. “Do I have to die before someone takes action?” She completely forgot the royal we. She had to be upset.
“No!” Grigg jumped to his feet with surprising agility. “I’ll go and talk to this man. If he’s the killer, I’ll know right away. I have instincts about this kind of thing. They trained me to spot liars and other criminals.”
“Oh brother,” Chase groaned. “Has it occurred to you, Grigg, that if you accuse Roger of something before we have any proof, we may never know what happened?”
“Something needs to be done,” Grigg reiterated. “We’ll find a way, Your Majesty.”
Livy held out her hand and let him kiss it. “We rely on you, Sir Officer. Our life is in your hands.”
Some people can handle the melodrama of day-to-day life in the Village, and some people can’t. I was afraid Grigg was one of the latter.
We left Livy in her sitting room and went back outside where the pirates were attacking the Lady of the Lake Tavern. They had a nice crowd of spectators for the fake cannon fire and smoke. The noise was deafening as the tavern surrendered to the band of thieves and blackguards.
“This place is really something.” Grigg looked more like a twelve-year-old first-time visitor than a hardened police officer. “I don’t know why I’ve never been here before. It’s great!”
“Let’s get back to this thing about Roger,” Chase said. “I don’t think he’s involved in this. He’s an ex-cop himself. If he was up there by Wicked Weaves that day, I’m sure there was a good explanation.”
“For one thing, his glass shop is right there where they found the body,” I agreed with him. “For another, what would his motive be? I can see Abraham, even Jah. But Roger? How would he be involved in this?”
“Maybe we should ask him,” Grigg said. “I can tell if he’s lying.”
Chase rolled his eyes as we walked past the swan swing and frog catapult. “Even if that’s true, unless you plan on arresting him, it won’t be much help. If there are any clues he left behind, he’ll just cover them up.”
Grigg stared at him. “Besides being a play sheriff here, Mr. Manhattan, what experience do you base this on?”
“Gut instinct,” Chase replied. “I know this place. We need to figure out what happened before we accuse anyone else of anything. I think Detective Almond said the same thing.”
It was good, rational thinking, but he’d already lost Grigg’s interest. “Look at that! Is that really a sword in a stone, just like the myth? I have to try that.”
We stood off to one side as Grigg tried his hand at the sword. “He’s never going to find anything, Jessie,” Chase said. “We have to do it ourselves.”
“I think you should let me talk to Mary first and see what she has to say.” I was thinking back to how well Roger seemed to know her and how he’d stood around with her while we were waiting for Detective Almond to take us away that first day. “Then we can break into his shop and steal his monk’s robe to have it tested.”
“And I thought Grigg had some dumb ideas.”
“No. Really. I told you I saw that monk’s robe. Maybe Roger is involved in what happened. Maybe he and Mary are involved somehow, and he was threatened by Joshua showing up after all these years. Maybe he got rid of his competition.”
“That’s crazy.” Chase heaved a large sigh and went to grab Grigg to get him away from the sword.
“I almost had it,” Grigg complained. “That’s the way it works, you know. Whoever can pull the sword from the stone is king.”
“Not here,” Chase assured him. “Only Arthur has the remote control gizmo that releases the sword. No one else can do it. You can come back at ten, noon, or four to watch him do it. This isn’t real, Grigg. All of it is playacting. That’s what makes it so fun and so hard to tell what’s fake.”
Grigg seemed to digest this information. “I still think I should talk to the glass blower. If he was thinking about hurting the queen because she saw him, he’d know we’re all on to him, so there wouldn’t be any point.”
Chase put his hand on Grigg’s shoulder. “Why don’t we have a tankard of ale at the Peasant’s Pub and talk it over. Jessie has to get back to work. Maybe you and I can decide what to do next.”
Grigg went for that. I kissed Chase good-bye and walked back to Wicked Weaves. I was surprised and pleased to find Jah and Mary selling baskets together. I listened in fascination as they described to customers how the baskets were made and their history on the South Carolina coast. The plan had worked. The two were bonding. I might still become a master basket weaver by the end of the summer.
I needed some time alone with Mary. After uniting them, I was going to have to split them up, at least for a while. I didn’t want her to have to answer to my questions about Roger in front of her son.
When the customers had left with their baskets, the three of us went back outside to weave. Jah seemed suddenly very content with his lot. I wasn’t sure I trusted that facade. He’d been too angry, too rebellious, to give in so quickly. I wondered what his game was and again reminded myself that he had motive and opportunity to kill his father. It sounded awful, but I knew it had happened in other families.
“Jessie, you’re stitching needs to be neater,” Mary said to me. “Pull those coils in tighter. The basket will unravel before it goes home.”
I looked at my stitching, and it looked the same to me. Still, I tried to pull it tighter as I used my bone to weave the sweetgrass coils. “So you learn to do this when you’re a child where you’re from?”
Mary nodded. “That’s right. Any five-year-old can make a basket.”
I felt there was an implied better than you in what she’d said. I ignored it. If it wasn’t constructive criticism, it was useless to me. “I can see that Jah has done this for a long time.”
“Actually it’s been years since I even thought about it,” he retorted. “I never thought I’d do this as an adult.”
“There’s great pride and heritage in what we do,” Mary said. “I’m not ashamed of making these baskets and selling them.”
“But haven’t you ever yearned to do something more, be something more?” Jah stopped weaving to look at his mother. “I could help you go to school or learn to do some other work.”
Mary laughed.
“I don’t want to do anything else. I’ve watched the people you’re talking about. They scurry around like sand crabs on the beach. I wouldn’t want to be one of them.”
“There’s pride in doing things other than manual labor, too, Mother,” Jah shot back.
The front door to the shop opened, the little bell chiming. “I’ll get that,” I offered.
“No. I’ll get it. You need the practice.” Jah threw me what passed for a smile. It was really more like a tight grimace that moved his mouth but not his face.
This seemed to be as good a time as any to ask Mary about Roger. “Livy told me she saw Roger coming from behind Wicked Weaves the day Joshua was killed.”
She didn’t look up. “So?”
“So, I was wondering where he was. I didn’t see him back here when I came down the steps.”
“Maybe he was already gone.”
“But from where?” I recalled that she’d been missing, too. “Is there something going on between you and Roger?”
“I think that’s none of your business.” Smoke puffed frantically from her pipe. “This thing with Joshua is over. We don’t need to keep talking about it.”
I told her about the monk’s robes and the funnel being tested by the police. “This isn’t over at all. You could still go to prison. You’re the top suspect right now. You had motive and opportunity, as they say on TV. They can keep coming out here and taking you back to the office as long as they want to.”
She looked up finally with a mutinous expression on her dark face. “I’m not afraid of them. I didn’t kill Joshua.” She took two more stitches in her basket. “But Joshua and I stopped being husband and wife a long time ago. Roger has always been there for me. All these years we kept our relationship a secret. I don’t see why that has to change now.”
“You’re doing it with Roger?” I could hardly say the words. I couldn’t believe I missed their relationship. But suddenly, all those meaningful glances and small, almost unnoticeable touches made sense.
“Shh!” She glanced toward the open door. “I don’t want to have this conversation with my son. He only just lost his daddy. He doesn’t need to think about this.”
I supposed this was good news. Mary and Roger might be each other’s alibi. Even though Joshua was killed before I’d noticed Mary was missing and Olivia saw Roger come out of the alley, maybe they were together during the night when the murder happened. I mentioned it to Mary.
She quickly shook her head. “I thought of that when I was talking to the police. Roger was with me earlier and again before you all found Joshua in the alley. But when they say Joshua was killed, I was alone. I don’t know about Roger.”
Which put us back to square one. Except now, Roger could be a real suspect. He had a motive to get rid of Joshua. He wouldn’t want the other man coming in and taking his wife back after all these years. There was the matter of the monk’s robe in his shop as well. I knew Mary wouldn’t want to think her lover could be responsible for her husband’s death, but it seemed possible to me.
There was arguing coming from inside Wicked Weaves. I offered to handle whatever the problem was for Mary. She accepted with a grunt. I knew it was okay when she didn’t get up.
I went in the back door, not thinking about sneaking in exactly, but the two men facing each other over a table of sweetgrass baskets didn’t hear me. I hid behind the door that led up to Mary’s apartment. Maybe I’d hear something useful as Jah and his adopted father, Abraham, argued.
“I don’t understand why you’re here,” Abraham said. “You should leave this place.”
“Are you afraid for me to spend time with my birth mother?” Jah asked him. I was glad to hear Jah sounded as angry with Abraham as he did everyone else.
“I’m not afraid of anything. But you’re wasting your time here. You start school in the fall again. You should be concentrating on that.”
I wished I could see the look on Jah’s face, but I had to be content with hearing the tone in his voice. “You’re afraid I might like her, even grow to love her again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I just don’t want you to be brought down by her.”
“Is that what happened to my real father?” Jah asked. “Were you afraid I’d be brought down by him, too?”
Abraham’s voice was full of outrage. “I’ve given you everything, yet you must come here to speak to the woman who abandoned you. I’ve been your father most of your life, yet you cling to some stupid idea about your birth father. They did not want you. That’s why I raised you. You should be content with that.”
“You didn’t answer me about my birth father. Did you kill him?”
“Yes.” Mary’s voice entered the conversation, and I realized that I’d hidden well enough to fool her, too. “Tell him the truth for once, Abraham. You’ve lied to him all of his life. Tell him the truth now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, old woman. Go back to your weaving. Leave my son alone.”
“Did he tell you the story of how his son, who was sick and weak, died while I was caring for him? Did he tell you how he demanded I leave my home and then forced my husband to lie to me about your death? He wanted to raise you as his own, but you’ll never be his.”
“Is this true?” Jah asked.
“You don’t need to ask such questions,” Abraham reprimanded. “She left you, and your birth father could not care for you. If I hadn’t taken you in, you would have died. Where were they when you were sick or scared? I am your father. You will do as I say and leave this place.”
“What about Joshua?” Mary pursued the subject. “Did you kill Joshua because he wouldn’t go home when you told him? All this time, I’ve told everyone you could never hurt your brother. Now I’m not so sure. You stand here and defile his memory to his son. I think you could do anything.”
There was silence where I imagined they were all staring at each other, waiting for Abraham to answer the charges brought against him. I wished I could sneak around and watch, but I was afraid if I moved, it would change the dynamics, and the question wouldn’t be answered.
“You’ve both lost your minds,” Abraham said finally. “I won’t answer to either of you. Jah, go home. Get ready for school. Obey me now, or you will no longer be my son.”
Jah’s voice, when it answered, was full of tears. “No, Father. I won’t leave yet.”
“So be it.” The front door opened and closed again, the chiming bell belying the strained silence in the shop.
Could there be any further doubt that Abraham had killed Joshua? I didn’t think so. I had no way to prove it unless the police lab found some DNA that would speak for itself. I didn’t wait. I sneaked back outside and was sitting down, weaving, when Mary and Jah came back out.
Neither one of them said anything. We all sat in the shade of the small plum tree and worked on our baskets. The day clouded over and threatened rain as customers came and went in the shop. I was waiting for some kind of declaration of Abraham’s guilt between Jah and Mary, but it never came.
At six p.m., we closed the shop. Mary asked if Jah could stay with her for the next two nights that he was sentenced to be in the Village.
“I don’t think Chase would care,” I told her. “I’m glad it’s worked out for you two to be together.”
She looked at me with narrowed dark eyes, sharp and bright in her brown face. “You heard everything, didn’t you?”
“I did. I guess we don’t have to wonder who killed Joshua anymore.”
“Don’t be a fool. Abraham was angry, but he didn’t kill his brother.”
“How can you say that? I heard him. He didn’t deny killing him.”
“His pride was hurt. That’s all. I’ve known this man all of my life. What he did with Jah was wrong. What Joshua and I did was wrong. That doesn’t make any of us killers. You’ll have to look somewhere else, Jessie.”
I didn’t think the police would agree with her. Of course, until we could prove it, nothing
mattered anyway. We needed a confession from Abraham. That didn’t seem to be forthcoming.
“Your basket looks good,” Mary complimented as she locked the front door. “You’ve come a long way. I’m glad you are here this summer. You brought Jah back into my life.”
I wasn’t sure how much of a blessing that would turn out to be, but at least she had her son. If we could make some connection between Abraham and Joshua’s death, that would be something.
Chase was waiting outside the shop for me. We started walking up the King’s Highway together, watching the other shops closing around us. Little dust devils whirled across the cobblestones as heavy, dark clouds settled in for the evening. I told him about Jah’s confrontation with Abraham and said, “I think we can safely say we have the killer.” He didn’t seem to be as impressed by it as I was.
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