Death of an Irish Diva (A Cumberland Creek Mystery)

by Bryan, Mollie Cox

  Vera felt the room spin as her mind sifted through the recent murders in her small town. Cumberland Creek had always been so safe. Except for the past few years.

  “Vera, your purse was found at the scene of the crime. I’m going to have to take you to the station for questioning,” he said.

  “I don’t know anything about this, Detective. Why would you need to question me?”

  “Vera, you’re the only suspect I have right now.”

  “Suspect? Me? I just told you that I was with Mom and Jon last night.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “Around eight,” she said. “I had to put Lizzie down.”

  “What did you do after?”

  “Nothing. I mean, I took a bath and went to bed, if you must know.”

  “And what was your purse doing in the studio?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Could he take her to jail? Who would stay with Lizzie? Who would run the few classes that she had left at her studio?

  “It’s a matter of public record that you two didn’t get along,” he said. “She wrote an editorial, didn’t she? About how ballet is bad for children psychologically, physically. And she claimed that anybody taking parents’ money for ballet lessons was a rip-off. And you wrote a scathing editorial back, right?”

  “I won’t deny that. I didn’t like the woman,” she replied, with eye contact. “Maybe she took my purse. Maybe that’s why you found it there.”

  “Maybe,” he said, looking away for a moment. “I think you better call your lawyer. I’m taking you in for questioning, Vera. Just procedure.”

  “Well, now my lawyer happens to be in a love nest in Charlottesville. God knows when he’ll get back to me. At least our daughter is in good hands. Annie will take care of her.”

  The detective looked off into the distance; a stiff, pained expression came over his face. Was it the mention of Annie? Was he still brooding over her rejection of him? What made him think that a happily married woman would give it all up for him?

  Chapter 3

  Beatrice and Jon were sitting on the screened back porch of her home, watching as the contractors dug a huge hole with a backhoe. She had thought for years about getting a pool in her backyard. It was a double lot, meaning it was deep, and there were no neighbors behind her. Ed, her first husband, had the foresight to buy two lots, for which she was grateful.

  March in Cumberland Creek made it difficult to plan. They could start the digging and have to stop for weeks if it snowed or rained. Spring weather was tricky business.

  Jon got up from his wicker chair when the front doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” he said.

  Beatrice sat back in her chair. She loved to watch his quick little walk. It was so nice to have him around. Well, for the most part.

  She’d gotten so used to being alone that sometimes just having another person around all the time was enough to make her want to scream. She was learning to go off in a room or to go for a walk when she felt as if she couldn’t stand to hear him breathe one more minute. If she didn’t get away from him, she’d find herself lashing out at him. And that was not good; it wasn’t what she wanted. After all, she did love the man, even if he was French. At least he’d learned to stop bringing that up.

  “In France, we do it like this. . . .”

  “If you were a Frenchwoman, I’d say this. . . .”

  “It’s better in France. . . .”

  She had just about had enough of it and had told him so.

  “Look, I love you, Jon, but if you’d like to go back to France, please do. Otherwise, please stop telling me about how wonderful it is and how much better it is than here.”

  He laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s so arrogant of me to be in your country and go on and on about France. Perhaps I miss it. Let’s visit together this summer, yes?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Instead, they decided to build a pool in Beatrice’s backyard and spend the summer lounging and swimming together in Cumberland Creek. They might go to France next year. His visa was going to expire, so he had to go back. Whether or not Beatrice was going with him was up for debate.

  When Jon came back to the porch, a police officer accompanied him.

  “What now?” Beatrice said, viewing a woman who looked like a sixteen-year-old teenager dressed up in her daddy’s police uniform. Good Lord, were they taking these kids out of school? Or was she just getting to be so old that everybody looked like children?

  “Excuse me?” the woman replied. “I’m Officer Melinda Jacquith. I need to ask you a few questions about you daughter, Vera Matthews.”

  “Have a seat, please,” Jon said, pushing the chair up to her.

  “Thanks,” she said, sitting down and smiling politely at Jon. “I won’t be long.”

  “Is something wrong with Vera? Has there been an accident?” Beatrice asked, sitting on the edge of her chair.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” one of the contractors said as he opened the screen door. “We have a problem.”

  “Can it wait?” Jon said.

  The man shook his head. “She said if there were any problems to come get her immediately.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Bea,” Jon said and accompanied the contractor back to his ditch.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you. Your daughter is fine,” the officer said to Beatrice.

  She exhaled. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “She’s being questioned at the station right now about the murder of Emily McGlashen.”

  Beatrice coughed up the iced tea she had started to sip. “What?”

  “She was found murdered this afternoon.”

  “What? Oh, that’s awful! She was so young,” Beatrice stammered, thinking of seeing her just yesterday, leading a group of green-clad children along the parade route, then later dancing on a makeshift stage in the center of town. Her legs were amazing—fast, strong, and elegant—and her upper body remained perfectly straight, just like those dancers in Riverdance, which Beatrice loved, though she’d never tell Vera that.

  When Emily first moved to town, Vera was excited that another dance studio was opening and was looking forward to partnering on some projects. Emily didn’t want anything to do with her—or with the “archaic,” “elitist” form of dance that Vera had made her life. The woman really hated ballet.

  “We need you to corroborate Vera’s whereabouts last night,” the officer said.

  “Well,” Beatrice said, “we all went to the Saint Patrick’s Day festivities and came back here for dinner.”

  “What time did Vera leave?”

  “I think around eight. She mentioned it was past Lizzie’s bedtime. Lawd, the child was getting fussy,” she said.

  “Well, thanks. That’s all I need to know.” The officer stood.

  “Wait a minute. Why would you be asking me about Vera? Why is she being questioned about this?” Beatrice said, standing to accompany the officer out.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the officer said and smiled. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you. I’ll find my own way out. Thank you.”

  With that, she turned to walk through Beatrice’s Victorian home, toward the front door.

  Well, now, if that wasn’t the damnedest thing she’d ever heard. Vera questioned about a murder. She just never knew what was going to happen in Cumberland Creek these days, or with her newly pronounced independent daughter. She did know that Vera and Emily hadn’t gotten along. Hell, everybody knew that.

  Beatrice wanted Vera and Lizzie to move in with her and Jon until Vera’s financial situation was resolved. But Vera wouldn’t hear of it. She’d never stood up to Beatrice like this before. She didn’t know what had come over her daughter since her divorce and becoming a mother, but she was stronger than ever. Beatrice hadn’t made up her mind whether or not that was a good thing.

  “Beatrice.” Jon was calling her. “Will you come out here? You’ve got to see this.”


  “What’s this?” Beatrice said as she walked up to Jon and several men in hard hats, with hands on their hips.

  “It looks like a very old foundation,” one of the men said.

  “Do what you need to do to get rid of it,” Beatrice said, thinking how odd it was that an old foundation was there. Her home was one of the first built in Cumberland Creek proper in 1895. Of course, there had been rumblings about older homes, but she had thought they were closer to the mountains.

  “It’s not that simple,” the man told her. “Look at this.” He pointed to a strange-looking root about halfway down the ditch. “You see?”

  “Can you get rid of it?”

  “I can’t get rid of it.”

  “Why not? What’s the big deal about a root? Chop it out of there.”

  “That’s no root. That’s bone. Old bone, I’d say. Petrified. I think it’s human. And I don’t have the authority to mess with it.”

  “Well, who does?” Beatrice said. “I don’t really like the idea of human bones in my backyard.”

  “We’ll call the police, but I think it will be a state matter.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  The man took off his gloves, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “I’m no expert, but I think this may be historical. You may need to excavate this site.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” she said almost to herself.

  Chapter 4

  It had been two weeks since the scrapbookers had gotten together, all of them in one place, to scrapbook. Last weekend the big Saint Patrick’s Day parade and festival occupied them. Since Vera’s dancers were performing, and Sheila was just getting back in town Saturday evening from a scrapbook conference, the other croppers had called it off. Annie took a long swig of her beer and set the bottle down gingerly next to the scrapbook she was working on for her parents, who were divorced years ago and were now back together, which made her uneasy. But she thought it would be fun to try to record in a scrapbook their lives before the divorce. She had decided on a black-and-white album, and it was turning out to be gorgeous.

  “It’s really awful what happened to Emily,” Sheila said. “I mean, she was a bitch, but who would have wished her dead enough to actually kill her?”

  “Well, it wasn’t me. And I think I have Bryant convinced of that,” Vera said. She sounded more convinced than she looked.

  “Bryant,” DeeAnn said with disdain.

  “Isn’t that a lovely photo?” Sheila said, pointing to DeeAnn’s picture of a huge rustic pie—crusty and thick, with berry juice spilling over the edges. DeeAnn’s project was a scrapbook for her bakery. She had had the bakery in town for about five years and had taken photos all that time, just like a good scrapbooker. “I respect how you are recording and journaling your bakery. You are on top of it.”

  “Thanks,” DeeAnn said. “I wish I’d been better about recording the kid’s stuff.”

  “The way Emily walked around town like she owned it because she was a McGlashen really annoyed me,” Paige said after a few moments. “And it annoyed all of us in the historical society. I mean, just because she traced her lineage back here doesn’t mean she had any right to behave like that.”

  “Evidently, all you ladies at the history society were not the only ones annoyed with her,” Annie said.

  “So are you going to write about this one?” Sheila asked, looking up from her laptop. She was trying to learn all about digital scrapbooking. She’d tried to get this group excited about it, but there were no takers, at least not yet.

  Annie shrugged. “I’m keeping my eye on the story to see if it develops into something. I mean, it’s getting to the point that murder is almost commonplace around here.”

  Vera gasped. “Don’t say that, Annie. I know it must seem like it to you, because it’s been like that for the past several years. But it’s just some kind of strange fluke. All these new people moving to town in droves. I’m sure the police will find out who killed Emily, and it will all be resolved soon and we can go back to our safe little lives.”

  “Humph,” said DeeAnn. “The police didn’t solve those other murders. It was us, but mostly Annie, remember?”

  And Annie wanted to forget all of it. She wanted it all to go away. She and her husband, Mike, had moved here from Bethesda, Maryland, to raise their boys in a safer, quieter place, where they would not be spending all their time stuck in Beltway traffic, shuttling their kids around. The plan was for her to stay at home, give up journalism, and just focus on the boys. But somehow she’d been sucked back into journalism. Mike wasn’t too pleased about it. The situation was becoming an issue in their marriage, so she had talked about it with her brother, Joshua, who was a psychiatrist.

  “You have an addictive personality,” Joshua had said to her during one of his visits. “You’re addicted to the adrenaline rush of a good story. The more dangerous, the better. Careful, Annie. You know all about Mom and her addictions.”

  “Oh, please, Josh,” she had said and waved him off.

  But she was afraid, and it had nothing to do with her mother’s cocaine addiction. She was not in the least attracted to cocaine. Still, there was something that kept gnawing at her, that pulled her into these dangerous situations. Why couldn’t she be at peace?

  Now her eyes glazed over the silver SHALOM sticker. She was deciding where to place it. Shalom. Peace. She told herself it was really all she wanted in her life.

  “My mom always said to leave the past alone,” Paige said, then grinned. “Maybe that’s why I love history so much.”

  “But why didn’t you get along with Emily, then? I mean, she was all about the past,” Sheila said.

  “It was the way she was about it. Okay, she traced her family back to the founders of the town. Big deal. Many of us here could say the same thing, I bet. She came in making demands from the society, throwing her money around. Wanting to dig in several areas, no matter whose property it was. And for what? So she could strut around town and make everybody else feel small,” Paige replied.

  “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but good riddance,” Vera said.

  Annie shivered, thinking of seeing the young woman’s twisted body. She silently thanked the universe that she couldn’t see Emily’s pretty face. It would have been devastating. Yes, she wasn’t well liked by many of the locals. But Annie was curious about her. Why would an international dance champion come to Cumberland Creek to open a studio? It had never made sense to Annie. She was certain there was more to her story. Maybe she would investigate a little further on her own, if she could find the time. But she would have to be quiet about it because Mike had had just about enough of her investigating. At that thought, a hard ball formed in her throat.

  She looked around the table at the women she called her friends: Sheila’s face slightly blue from the glow of her laptop; DeeAnn’s large arms leaning on the table, her brow knitted; Paige pasting a flower sticker onto her scrapbook page, then tucking a piece of her wavy blond hair behind her ear; and Vera, the dancer, who used to dye her hair a different color once a month and used to be perfectly coiffed at all times. But no longer. The past few months had taken a toll. She had bags under her blue eyes and gray hair sprouting everywhere. Annie wondered if Vera even realized it.

  “Vera, I didn’t get a chance to tell you,” Annie said. “I loved watching your dancers at the festival.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Vera said, smiling. “I thought they did very well. Of course, Emily was sneering at me the whole time my dancers were onstage. I tried to ignore it.”

  “Oh, I saw it,” Sheila said. “I also picked up one of these flyers. She was handing them out.” She read the flyer out loud. “Do you know? Emily McGlashen, an international Irish dance champion and Riverdance sensation, is now taking students in Cumberland Creek, at her new dance studio. Irish dance and performance classes are less than half of what locals have been paying for ballet at the other local studio. Irish dance is better for students’ int
ellectual, physiological, and physical development.” Sheila paused.

  “According to who? Where did she get this stuff? It’s just so unprofessional of her. Of course, issues are debated within the dance community. But to go around making public statements?” Vera said. “I’d never do anything to hurt kids. Ballet is good for them. I know that, even though Cookie used to say kind of the same thing, that it went against natural body alignment. And it’s true. But if you develop the strength to support those positions, it’s just not a problem for most students.”

  “Thought we weren’t going to mention her again,” Annie said more sharply than what she had intended. Cookie Crandall, a past member of their group, was arrested on suspicion of murder and had escaped jail. None of them had heard from her ever again.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. I never should have mentioned her,” Vera said, then bit her lip.

  Silence fell over the Cumberland Creek crop. Annie felt as if her breath had been sapped out of her. Vera sighed.

  “It’s getting late,” Vera said, gathering up her things. “I need to go.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” Annie said and then drank the last bit of beer.

  Chapter 5

  When Vera woke up, she was standing at the kitchen sink. It was still early enough to be dark, and in her confusion she groped around and cut her finger on a knife left in the sink.

  “Damn,” she said out loud to nobody. Elizabeth had spent the night with Beatrice and Jon. She flipped on a light switch and was startled by the amount of blood splashed in the sink. She ran cold water over her finger and realized that she must have been sleepwalking, which she hadn’t done since she was a child.

  She reached for a paper towel. Damn, where were the bandages? She knew there was a package of Sesame Street ones in Elizabeth’s room. She tiptoed over the toys in her room and reached for it. She wrapped her finger with an Elmo Band-Aid.

  After her first cup of coffee, finger all wrapped up, she sat at her ugly plastic kitchen table and ate a toasted blueberry waffle, reveling in the silence of the apartment without Elizabeth.