Death Takes Priority

by Jean Flowers

  “Matter of fact, I was just leaving.” Ben put on his jacket and tipped his cap toward me. “Night, Postmaster,” he said with a grin. “I’ll walk you out, Officer.”

  Whatever dirt Ben had on Wendell wasn’t going to be revealed today. Maybe I should have brought more cupcakes. I still hadn’t gotten the hang of the North Ashcot system of bartering.

  * * *

  A small rush of customers forced me to ignore the newly returned phone books and take care of immediate business. Besides, I needed a stretch of quiet time first, to count the directories, check the bundles for any damage, and generally welcome them back, before handing them out.

  A phone call came in while I was putting through a medium-sized flat-rate parcel. The caller ID was the NAPD. Priority interrupt. I collected high-schooler Joanie Campbell’s money for a sheet of LOVE stamps with one hand, smiled at her, and answered Sunni’s call with the other hand. I figured a teenager would surely understand this kind of multitasking.

  “Sorry I didn’t get to warn you about Quinn, Cassie. It’s been a wild couple of days,” Sunni said.

  “I second that.”

  “A big-name attorney stomped into my office and showed me some paperwork and demanded that Quinn be released. To tell you the truth, I didn’t give him much of an argument. We really had nothing, and I decided that Quinn on the loose might lead us to something. He’s in trouble for changing his name without going through proper channels with Social Security and the motor vehicles registry, et cetera, but that’s not really our problem.”

  This was the moment when I could have mentioned the quasi-UAA letter I had in my possession. But I found a way out in her comment that Quinn Martindale was no longer her problem.

  “Thanks for that update, Sunni,” I said, and agreed that we needed to have lunch soon.

  So many potential dates—Sue and Beth, to make up for leaving me stranded; Tim Cousins, who’d banged on my CLOSED sign; Derek Hathaway, who’d rather talk to me and follow me than have tea; a redheaded stalker who might or might not be a reporter; Gert Corbin, of our governing board, who wanted to officially welcome me to town and probably pitch her anti-betting agenda; and now the chief of police. If they all came through, I’d be one busy postmaster.

  After Sunni’s call, I had to handle an unpleasant incident. A woman I’d never seen before came to the counter with a postal money order for eight hundred dollars. I told her I was sorry, but I didn’t have that much cash on hand.

  “Of course you do,” she said. She tapped the multicolored check-sized piece of paper. “These can be cashed for up to one thousand dollars.”

  Ordinarily, I would have inspected the paper for legitimacy—the Benjamin Franklin watermarks and the vertical thread of the letters “USPS” and other telltale features—but I didn’t have the cash to begin with, so it was a moot point whether her check was legitimate.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “So many people pay with credit cards these days, I just don’t have eight hundred dollars in cash.”

  She leaned over the counter. If she had been any larger or fitter, I would have felt physically threatened, but she was a short, dumpy woman, older than me by a lot, with wiry gray hair. The only weapons I could see were a handful of long nails in a too-bright shade of red, now shaking at me.

  “This is no way to run a business,” she told me. “I waited until the end of the day. I don’t believe you don’t have enough money on hand by now. You’re simply a poor manager.”

  I felt compelled to ask why on earth I would want to keep the cash from her. Instead I thought of all my training in “Dealing With Difficult People,” so seldom used until this moment. A small line had formed and I was eager to settle the matter. I pulled out an empathetic smile, suggested that she could visit the bank two blocks away, which would surely have the cash, and offered to call them for her to confirm that they were adequately supplied to meet her needs. As she continued to rail against my management abilities, I handed the unhappy woman a sheet with information on filing complaints. I explained that she could call, fax, send a letter or an e-mail, expressing her displeasure.

  She grabbed the form, turned on her heels, and nearly ran down the next customer.

  The best part of the incident was that every customer after her was sweeter than sweet to me and sympathized with what I had to deal with.

  “You were so patient with her. I’d have clocked her,” said a male customer.

  “Poor dear. You didn’t need that,” said a female customer.

  And so it went, down the line, with more praise for my management skills than I could have hoped for. In all my years interacting with customers of the post office, the number of such incidents was negligible and the support that followed was always heartening.

  The rest of the workday was not as exciting. There were no more questions about my part in the big news feature, just a few expressions of surprise and regret at the death of someone they knew. I assumed that everyone who could had watched the broadcast and heard Sunni’s announcement.

  Still, when it was time to close up, I wasn’t looking forward to leaving the building, lest I be accosted by reporters.

  * * *

  I made it to my car, which was parked around the back of the building. No sign of stalkers, or well-meaning “friends” like Tim Cousins or Derek Hathaway. Given yesterday’s town-meeting atmosphere, I wondered where everyone was today. Either they no longer cared about the murder victim in our town, or they’d heard his identity and lost interest. Neither option was one to be proud of.

  It also occurred to me that the citizens might be staying home, behind their lace curtains, in case the killer was out and about, seeking his next victim. I locked my car doors and drove off.

  I still had Quinn’s letter in my purse, all my fuss over what to do with it futile. But now that Quinn was free of police custody, and the whole town, in Ben’s words, knew his identity, things were less complicated in a way. I didn’t have to worry about sneaking correspondence in to a virtual prisoner. If I could find him, that is. I’d tried his cell phone but it went to voicemail each time.

  A few blocks past the police station, I took a sharp left and slowed down as I approached Ashcot’s Attic, the antiques store where Quinn worked. The store was dark, a CLOSED sign in the window and their distinctive distressed blue delivery truck in the driveway. I guessed it wouldn’t be good advertising for an antiques shop to own a shiny new vehicle.

  A small white-panel van with a telltale satellite dish on its roof was parked under a maple tree a few yards from the front door of the shop. The streetlights and the leaves and trunk of the maple made a strange pattern of shadows on the lawn and the storefront. Creepy, almost. Maybe Ben’s Halloween story had affected me in more ways than he had in mind. Or maybe it was the young redheaded nag. Or the strange run-in with Derek Hathaway.

  I drove on by.

  I considered going to Quinn’s home, but figured there’d be a news crew there also—everyone but Quinn himself. They didn’t have a lot to do, reporters Erin and Rick. The show kept them busy with a book group; sports coverage of local teams; reports by reps from the water district board; civic events and announcements. A murder trumped them all, even off-track betting, and I had to remember that news was their job—we loved news people when we needed them, dissed them when our sensibilities were offended. Not too different from other professions, now that I thought of it.

  I made a U-turn and headed to my home. I parked down the block and walked the rest of the way. I figured I could slip between neighboring houses and enter my own through the back door. Time to find out how smart reporters were.

  At the end of my street, I saw a familiar white van with a satellite-bedecked roof. Either Channel 30 had a fleet of vans, or the same crew was following me. For a minute I considered knocking on the panel door and confronting them.

  Then mental exha
ustion kicked in, and instead, I ducked behind an old clapboard cottage and made my way through the two backyards before mine. I entered my home, found my glide rocker with the help of only a hallway night-light, and plopped down on its seat. Safe, at last. One would think I was the one who had spent twenty hours in jail.

  It didn’t take long for intense curiosity to overcome my low energy, and I ventured farther into my living room. I approached the front windows, pausing at each step to listen for sounds of outdoor activity. I pushed my fingers through slats in the blinds to separate two of them, wondering if the van had moved closer to the house.

  No van. No redhead on the loose. Something worse. A man, in shadows, sitting on my front steps, just below the porch.

  I pulled back my fingers and stepped away from the window so quickly I nearly fell backward over a small footstool and knocked my black UMass captain’s chair against the wall. I took a breath, and moved to the other side of the bay windows, peering through a lower set of slats, to see if anyone had heard what seemed like a commotion inside my house.

  My visitor hadn’t moved. I studied his shape. Broad shoulders, slightly hunched over, hands between his knees, a ball cap on his head.

  Scott James. Quinn Martindale.

  I sat on the chair and leaned against the college seal on its crown, as if all the wisdom and learning in the generations of alumni at UMass could come to my aid and help me decide what to do about the man on my stoop. He’d committed fraud at least, possibly murder; he’d stolen from me and, technically, every post office box holder in town. Yet he’d helped Ben clean up a Halloween mess and had been nothing but a perfect lunch date. Until the police had come for him.

  I weighed the pros and cons. And opened my front door.

  * * *

  I took one look at Quinn and knew what he wanted most. I couldn’t do much about the slump in his shoulders, but I could at least help him wash away a night without sleep.

  “Let me get you some towels,” I said. “The bathroom’s back there on the left.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Bad enough.”

  I dug out the largest sweatshirt I owned, a gray XXL with a maroon UMASS MINUTEMEN logo on the front, and added it to the pile of towels. Pushing the limits of the extent to which I could accommodate a male guest.

  “Can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” he said. “I’ll be out in ten.”

  Quinn emerged on time, presenting a whole different picture. I’d turned up the heat, poured two mugs of coffee, and placed a plate of cookies on the coffee table in the living room. “Slim pickings,” I said.

  “I’m the one who barged in on you.”

  “I opened the door.”

  “I know you want some answers,” he said.

  “It’s not my business, really.”

  “I’d like to make it your business, if you don’t mind.”

  I gulped. As a pickup line, that wasn’t too bad, especially from a guy who was freshly showered.

  8

  Here was my chance to ask Quinn, the former Scott James, all the questions that had been nagging at me: about his mother’s status as a murder suspect; about his own connection to the murder of Wendell Graham, my onetime boyfriend; about the first-class letter staring at me through leather every time my gaze landed on my purse.

  I seemed frozen by his offer to give me some answers. I invited him to have a seat across from me, the coffee table between us, while I prepared my queries.

  My first question should have been, “Who are you?” but instead, I came up with what seemed to be the most trivial incident, but had been the beginning of the weirdness of the last two days.

  “Why did you go to all that trouble to steal my phone books?” I asked. I could see that Quinn was as surprised as I was at my choice of opening, but he jumped right in.

  “It was stupid, Cassie.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I’ve been trying to keep a low profile. Actually, to erase all evidence of Quinn Martindale. For now. I took the identity of someone who died decades ago. You’d be amazed how easy it is, once you start clicking around the Internet. You just find someone deceased, with no family, get a new phone, and start there. I thought it was going to be for a short time, so I didn’t have to bother building a whole background. Ever wonder why I keep to the speed limit so carefully? I don’t want to get pulled over and have to show my Quinn Martindale license.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Sorry, of course not. You’ve never asked to see my license. And you’ve only ridden with me once.”

  “And that wasn’t even a round-trip,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, put him at ease.

  “Thanks for reminding me how that trip ended.”

  “Now I’m sorry.”

  He waved away my apology. “A couple of weeks ago, I found out that Fred, my boss at the shop, without asking me, put my photo in an ad he took out in the new directory, the issue that was going to be delivered to the post office last week.”

  “Without running it by you first?”

  “He thought he was doing me a favor, and complimenting me. Said he needed a new cute face”—here Quinn blushed, I was relieved to see—“someone that might appeal to the younger generation. He’d taken a few pictures with his cell phone at an open house we had, and apparently I wasn’t vigilant enough and he caught me smiling at a customer.”

  “At least he didn’t put it on a supermarket cart,” I said, and hoped I wasn’t being overly frivolous.

  “It’s a good thing there aren’t any bus stops in North Ashcot, or I might have found myself on a bench,” he said, adding to the humor.

  “Or on the bus itself, big as life.”

  Quinn took a long breath; I felt he was reliving the last week or so of anguish. “I thought if I took all the directories, well, no one would really miss them, and I’d have my anonymity a little while longer. At that point I should have taken off, left town instead. Another new name, whatever, but I was getting settled here, feeling comfortable. And I’d just met you.”

  I could feel a hard ball of suspicion forming in the pit of my stomach, a frown taking shape on my face. I may even have shaken my head at the part about meeting me, flashing back to the lovely feminine penmanship on the letter now in my purse. Quinn leaned forward, his arms on his thighs, one hand grasping the other. I sat back and folded my arms across my chest, protecting myself from his sincere look, wrapped in my sweatshirt. He pulled back, sat up straight.

  “Cassie, I’m not trying to play you. I know you’re smart. I did a selfish thing. There was no real excuse.” Quinn’s voice started to crack. “The worst thing was all the trouble it caused you. I didn’t think it would, but, like I said, I was stupid. And I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself.”

  The doorbell rang and both our heads snapped up. I seldom heard the ring at my home in the evening. Once Aunt Tess was gone, I’d had no visitors other than delivery people.

  Quinn stood. “I know who that is. I hope you don’t mind. While you were getting the coffee, I ordered a pizza.”

  “You’re kidding. Pizza delivery in North Ashcot?”

  “From South Ashcot, actually.” He smiled. Not too symmetric a grin; just crooked enough to be interesting. “I found this place that will deliver across the border for an extra couple of dollars. They’re very good, made right on the premises.” As if that were the most important issue we needed to address at the moment. He got out his wallet, put two twenties on the table, and stood. “That should cover it. If you don’t mind, I’m going to make myself scarce.”

  What kind of alternate universe had I fallen into? Then and there I had a mind to call the police. How could I be sure there was a pizza on the other side of my door and not an accomplice? A hit man. The real Scott James. The real Quinn Martindale. Wendell Graham’s killer. All of the ab
ove.

  I wrestled with a shiver of fear as Quinn walked away from me, crossed the living room floor, through the small dining room, and settled himself at my kitchen table, out of the line of sight of the front door. I picked up the cash and engaged my slat-opening fingers again at the window. I had no view of anyone standing close to my door, but I could make out a red SUV at the curb. I squinted at a logo on the side and an enormous, plastic slice of pizza on the roof. It looked benign, if not classy. I couldn’t imagine a hit man going to all that trouble.

  I opened the door. The aroma of tomato, sausage, and cheese hit my nostrils and I knew I’d made the right decision.

  “Extra-large pizza, four sections of toppings.” The announcement came from a pimply-faced kid in a red company parka that matched the truck. He looked past me at the empty (he thought) house and down at the huge box. “Is this the right place?”

  I nodded. “I’m having a party later.”

  “Cool,” pronounced “kewell.” He seemed happy with his tip and bounded down the stairs two at a time.

  Quinn carried the unwieldy box to the kitchen table and I sat there with my mystery guest. In the short time it took me to say, “This was a great idea. Thanks,” Quinn consumed an entire slice of pizza from the first section, the “everything” topping. I would have bet that he hadn’t had a normal meal since our tiny cucumber sandwiches yesterday. Neither had I, come to think of it. I took a slice from the second section, the extra cheese and mushroom quadrant.

  I wanted to hear more. We still hadn’t gotten to the part where his mother may or may not have killed someone. I allowed Quinn one more slice and a coffee refill before asking him to continue.

  “I’m from Northern California, where I was born—Quinn Martindale’s my birth name, by the way—in a town north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge. My mother lived in the middle of the city. She’s had a rough life, starting with my father, who died a long time ago, killed by his own reckless driving.” He took a swallow of coffee before continuing. “Enter my stepfather, I guess you’d call him, even though it was a good thing he had no fathering to do. He married my mother about three years ago and turned out to be just another version of my father, with the added attraction of being a gambling addict. Then last year, he was found murdered—stabbed so many times, they were sure it was a crime of passion, and my mother was charged. She’s now in custody, awaiting trial. I ran away to avoid testifying. If they can’t find me, they can’t call me.”