by Jean Flowers
“No need to worry. I can take you right to your door if you like,” he said, as if he’d misunderstood my question.
I sat back, resigned to my state of ignorance. “Drop me at the post office, please.” I relaxed a bit. Soon I’d be at the heart of the rumor mill.
“So, I’ve always wondered. What’s it like, running the post office all by yourself?” Ross asked. “Is it interesting?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll bet you see a lot. Like who’s writing to who and how often. Or maybe who’s stopped writing to who,” he added with a chuckle.
“Yes,” I said, this time closing my eyes and pretending to nap. A dose of his own clamming-up medicine. Information had to work two ways. If my lack of response discouraged a young man who was looking into a career change, so be it.
My resolve lasted about ten minutes. Then I opened my eyes, not wanting to miss the midafternoon sun on the last of the orange and gold birch leaves. We passed the occasional large white farmhouse, dots of gray barns, fields of lush, aromatic green grass, mellow horses next to weathered fences. The sounds of rustling weeds and little else. There might as well have been a sign reading “Small Town, Next 50 Miles.”
Did I miss the imposing skyline of Boston? The gold-domed capitol building and the endless brick plaza at Government Center? The mix of historic sites, shopping, and the nightlife of Downtown Crossing? The sailboats and the regatta on the Charles? Yes and no. I wondered how long it would take me to be sure I’d made the right choice. I hoped the feeling of being home again would make up for what I was missing.
* * *
No one could remember the last time North Ashcot had been the scene of a murder. No wonder my post office looked like someone had called a town meeting and we were the hosts. To accommodate the overflow, Ben had opened the inside door off the lobby to the community room. It would have been much better for our business if the crowd were here to spread their gossip by using USPS products. Our little post office would have been overflowing with letters, postcards, overnights, and every other kind of special delivery available. But today’s crowd consisted mostly of people who’d dropped in to chat about what they knew and what was showing on their smart devices. And once word got out that there were leftover snacks from the weekend crafts fair in the community room, there was no holding anyone back.
I spotted our Board of Selectmen, four men and one woman, wandering through the crowd. They didn’t appear to be doing anything to manage the impromptu citizens’ assembly, but were rather using the opportunity for informal campaigning.
Gertrude Corbin, the lone female board member, saw me and made her way through the pack. She was a tall, rather heavy woman with past-blond, shoulder-length hair and a loud voice that I figured she’d cultivated in order to be heard at meetings.
“Cassie Miller, isn’t it?” she asked me, shaking my hand, an earnest look in her eyes.
“That’s me,” I said, thinking of the small blue pot holder in my kitchen with her name on it.
“Gert Corbin,” she said, still grasping my hand. “I’ve been meaning to stop in and welcome you back to town. I’m sorry I had to miss the memorial for your aunt Tess.” She shook her head and tsk-tsked. “Tess and Uncle Mike, rest in peace, were big supporters of mine.”
Thus the pot holder in my kitchen. Today Gert, in her mid-fifties at least, I guessed, wore a full-length navy blue coat with a blue-and-red paisley scarf. Under it were traces of a light denim-colored dress. She carried a navy leather business tote and looked as patriotic as my post office décor, and ready for a campaign speech.
“Thanks,” I said. “For the welcome,” I added, lest she’d read my mind and thought I was thanking her for the pot holder.
“We should chat sometime.” Gert rolled her head to take in the crowd. “When it’s a little less hectic.” Her voice turned somber. “Terrible thing, isn’t it? A murder in our town?”
“Terrible,” I said, and stepped aside as another voter, a man about her age, maneuvered his way in to address Gert.
“I hope you’re pushing to get that new betting club for us,” he said to her. “It’s the best idea to hit North Ashcot in a long time. We need something else to attract visitors besides a few colored leaves in the fall. These parlors are cropping up everywhere and it’s about time we caught up.”
“Now, Coach,” Gert said, a little patronizing to my ear, “is that really the way you want to spend your hard-earned money? Gambling it away on some dumb race horses?”
“Now that should be my choice, shouldn’t it, Madame Selectwoman?”
Coach—a name? a title? I couldn’t tell—used Gert’s designation in a decidedly sarcastic way. I had the feeling this wasn’t their first encounter. Then he seemed to notice that I was standing there, too and decided to recruit me.
“What do you think?” he asked, and, without waiting for an answer, began his pitch. “My brother told me about this club out near San Francisco. Three hundred screens. You can watch and bet on horse racing anywhere in the world.” He handed me a color brochure with “all the facts you need before you vote.”
What fun, I thought. It was a good thing he didn’t need a response from me.
“Tell you what,” Gert replied, at the same time taking her own flyer from her tote and handing one to Coach. “Read this and then tell me if you want to attract the kind of people who patronize these clubs. I know you better than that, Coach.”
I knew the voting wouldn’t take place until early in the new year—a special referendum off-season, but for politicians it was never off-season for pushing an agenda.
I was impressed at how Gert could disagree with Coach and still maintain a smiling countenance and an air of caring about him and how he spent his money. But the last thing I was interested in was a place to gamble my own hard-earned money—or debating the issue—so I accepted the flyer she held out to me and excused myself. The two, still intensely engaged, hardly noticed as I moved on.
I scanned the crowd again and noted that Derek Hathaway seemed to have beat the cruiser here. Or maybe his driver did. As short as he was, Derek was conspicuous for his well-cut suit, one that would have done my ex-fiancé proud at a party in Boston. He caught me looking at him and winked. Too bad he’d moved to Albany; we could be friends. Not. There was something off about a guy who drove to a tea shop for a snack and then didn’t go in, but instead rushed back to town to gossip about a murder.
I heard conflicting comments being passed off as fact. The only claim that was verifiable: Early this morning the body of a North Ashcot man had been found in the woods near an abandoned glass factory on the outskirts of the town. He’d been shot; his name wouldn’t be released until his family could be contacted. The other confirmed truth: Scott James, beloved antiques dealer, was now in the custody of the North Ashcot Police Department.
As for other details, there were more rumors than holiday cards in December. The victim was either early forties or a senior citizen. A longtime resident or a newcomer. Bald or wearing a cap over a mop of hair. Shot with a small-caliber handgun or a sawed-off rifle. Dressed in a suit or a jogging outfit. It was anyone’s guess what was what. And concerning the prime suspect, not that anyone had heard that term from an official, I thought I heard volunteers agreeing to sit on his jury.
Even Mrs. Hagan’s parrot, Blackbeard, seemed to have an opinion, though we had to take his owner’s word for it that he was screeching “Danger! Danger!” The bird and his owner hadn’t been expected to arrive until just before closing time, when the pickup truck would be here, precisely to avoid subjecting everyone to chirping that was unintelligible to most human ears. But who could blame Mrs. Hagan for wanting to be in on the excitement downtown? I was grateful that this bird was not as loud as others, like the squawking pheasants that often passed through the post office on the way to a new home.
The gossip continued, easily drown
ing out the wildlife. I had the bright idea that all we had to do was take attendance right now, figure out who was not present, and that would be our victim. Or maybe our killer. I stepped back into a corner and surveyed the crowd, keeping out of the way in case the opposite were true of the killer.
“Muffin?” An attractive young redhead in an olive green parka seemed to have followed me to the corner. She held out a paper plate with two small blueberry muffins.
I smiled and shook my head. “Two days old, I presume?”
“You’re right, they’re left over from the crafts fair,” she said, and tossed everything into a wastebasket under the table with the postal forms Scott had so carefully rearranged only a few hours ago. “What was it like having your lunch interrupted by the police?”
My smile collapsed. “Excuse me,” I said, moving away from her and into the crowd. “I have some business to take care of.”
“I’d just like to talk to you for a minute or two and get your impressions of what happened today.”
“Sorry,” I said, as I kept inching away from her, toward the counter.
She held out a card. “I’m Wanda Cox. Will you call me?”
Too bad I could barely hear her as I was swallowed up by the people who were not reporters. Also, too bad my hands were in my pockets and not free to accept her card.
When our chief of police entered the lobby, the noise level began to die down, ending with an offering by old Harvey Stone. “I heard the dead guy’s fingers were on the other side of the border, all the way into South Ashcot,” he said.
“I wish I could say the case was South Ashcot’s responsibility, but it’s ours.” The voice of our police chief finally brought the chatter of man and beast to a halt. Sunni used her thumb and fingers to show us just how close the call was.
It was up for grabs whether the townsfolk were enjoying their own stories too much to be constrained by facts as presented by their chief of police.
Most of the border between North and South Ashcot was in the form of a small stream, but a patch of woods at one end, where the body was found, was the subject of many measurements over the years. Especially when it came to zoning issues, it was the North versus the South, all over again.
Responses to the South Ashcot rumor ranged from several who yelled, “Dang,” to others who muttered, “Thank goodness.”
“Everybody back to business,” Sunni said. “Let me and my squad do our jobs and pretty soon you’ll have all the facts you need to twist into a good story.” She winked at the crowd in general, then approached me. While the townsfolk resumed conversation, undeterred by the word of the law, Sunni addressed me in a near whisper. “Can you come down to the station, Cassie? A few questions, if you don’t mind. We can wait till you close up.”
My throat clutched, as if I weren’t just another member of the uninformed, but a person of interest. I tried to focus on Sunni’s tone. A request, not a command. Almost giving me a choice—if you don’t mind—unlike her approach to Scott.
I’d known Sunni only for the three months I’d been home; she’d arrived in North Ashcot about four years ago, long after I’d left for Boston. I’d had to deal with various official protocols regarding my aunt’s death, and Sunni either took care of things or directed me toward those who could help. We’d developed a friendship of sorts. Now and then she’d bring her lunch to the post office and we’d rap about politics and world affairs, or our preference in hairstyles. One time we’d met at the farmers’ market and gone for coffee together afterward.
I had a feeling that our upcoming conversation would be more of the cop-to-citizen variety than the girlfriend-to-girlfriend variety.
I looked over the heads of the slowly dissipating crowd to catch Ben’s eye. In one corner, Selectwoman Gert Corbin was in a huddle with Derek Hathaway. I would have assumed that Derek had little business here, now that he was a star in the New York State capital. It was hard to tell who was pitching to whom when the high and mighty gathered. Was Gert preaching about a gambling-free North Ashcot, or was Derek negotiating a land deal that would bring him more money?
Although he was stuck behind the counter, Ben, my loyal back-up, hadn’t missed a beat. He gave me a nod that I took to mean I could leave with Sunni now; he had it covered. I guessed that no matter how sweetly a member of law enforcement asked you to report to her office, it was best to respond immediately.
I gave Sunni a neutral smile. “I’m ready to go if you are,” I said.
“No one’s going to miss me here,” she said.
“That makes two of us.”
4
The North Ashcot police station was across the street and down three blocks from the post office. In the first block, well-kept lawns were spread in front of mostly white or pastel-colored clapboard houses. Various combinations of tricycles, leather-seated swing sets, and the beginnings of what would be Christmas scenes were visible on porches and on the pathways.
I had a flashback to neighborhood tours with my parents when I was a kid, when families competed with each other for the most elaborate decorations in town. Santa and his reindeer on the roof? Easy. Elves in the garden, making motion-activated robotlike gestures? So last year. Metal sleighs, candy canes, giant plastic snowmen, oversized candles, scary-tall wooden soldiers? The bigger, the better.
I’d heard that the custom did not survive the years. Neither had my parents, who’d died in a car crash, their vehicle loaded with Christmas presents a few months before my sixteenth birthday. It had taken a few years, but, with Aunt Tess’s help in the beginning, I finally learned to dwell on the best memories, and how lucky I’d been to have them through my childhood. Still, I hadn’t looked forward to Christmas the same way since. Nor my birthday either, in fact.
The conversation, or lack of, between Sunni and me today required little attention, which was handy for my reverie. We walked abreast whenever the broken sidewalk permitted, and chatted about the lovely fall weather, the new shoe shop in town, and the burning question of whether the introduction of off-track betting would be good or bad for us. No hint of the fact that I’d been on an almost-date with someone she brought in for questioning, presumably in a murder investigation; no hint of what were her questions for me that had prompted this walk in the first place.
The second block was perfect for more small talk. Shops and service offices lined both sides of the street. We passed a bank, a salon, a hardware store, a title company, in quick succession on one side, while across the street was my favorite coffee shop, which just so happened to be the only one in town. Café Mahican’s owners made no apology for its mixed ancestry name or its spelling, claiming authentic familial links among Native Americans who settled around Albany in the early sixteen hundreds. The décor was part European, part American Indian.
We had no trouble complaining about banking rules and bemoaning the lack of time we had for a mani-pedi or a leisurely cappuccino. Enticing, noteworthy aromas came from the Swiss bakery, but we settled for olfactory satisfaction only. Instead of indulging in cupcakes, we stopped for a moment to look in the window of a fabric shop next to the bakery. Sunni pointed out a particular bolt of red cloth that was close, but not perfect for her current project: sewing a quilt with each patch celebrating the history and culture of North Ashcot. She was awaiting the arrival of the special shade of red cotton that she’d ordered.
“One of the patches will represent our spring kite festival,” she said. “It’s a great event. Lots of them are handmade. You should participate next year.”
I wasn’t sure whether she meant I should quilt or fly kites, but it was good to know that she expected me to be free then and not watching the festivities through heavy metal bars. “I don’t sew at all. I’d need to take some classes first,” I admitted, feeling as though I’d betrayed my small-town roots.
“I can help. We have a great group of quilters in town. The schedule wil
l be different with the holidays coming up. I’ll let you know.”
Uh-oh. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of a quilting bee, if they still called them that. I smiled and thanked Sunni anyway. I told myself that once the day was over, she’d forget she’d mentioned it to me. Or she’d remember and be as sorry as I was that she did.
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t give my mind over completely to this delightful girl talk. I was on my way to be questioned about a murder I knew almost nothing about and, probably, a handsome lunch date I knew equally little about.
We crossed in front of the elementary school, just short of an abandoned church that was now home to its remodeler, Tim Cousins. Seeing it reminded me that Tim, who’d been friendly to me, might have agreed to come to my rescue and provided a ride this afternoon. I made a note to make contact with him as soon as things were back to normal. Maybe he’d teach me to scrape paint, which sounded a little more interesting than learning to sew. There was only so much I was willing to do for a little companionship.
Sounds of ten-year-olds at music practice poured out from the schoolhouse and brought shaking heads and chuckles from the chief and me. I hoped I’d be chuckling on my way home.
* * *
The journey to the police department building, which seemed to have sapped more energy than an entire day’s work, had taken only about ten minutes of real time. I entered the redbrick building behind its chief officer, still with only random notions as to why I was there.
The police force, five officers in all to serve a town of thirty square miles, about one third the size of Boston proper, was housed in a two-story brick Colonial-style structure, not too different from my post office, but much shabbier inside. Except for the state-of-the-art coffeemaker, which stood on its own heavy oak table next to the floor-mounted American flag.