Morning Glory Circle

by Pamela Grandstaff

  Morning Glory Circle

  By Pamela Grandstaff

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2009 Pamela Grandstaff

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 1439258422

  EAN-13: 978-1439258422

  For Betsy

  Chapter One – Monday

  Chapter Two – Tuesday

  Chapter Three – Wednesday

  Chapter Four - Thursday

  Chapter Five – Friday

  Chapter Six - Saturday

  Chapter Seven – Sunday

  Chapter Eight - Monday

  Chapter Nine – Tuesday

  Chapter Ten – Wednesday

  Chapter Eleven – Thursday

  Chapter One – Monday

  Margie Estep sealed the entrance to the hiding place where she kept all her secrets, or rather, the stolen evidence of other people’s secrets. A frisson of fear and excitement ran up her spine at the prospect of setting into motion one of the most clever schemes she had ever concocted. One day, after she disappeared and was living her new life somewhere far away, she hoped someone would figure out what she’d done and how she’d done it. Her only regret about leaving the town she had lived in all her life was not being able to witness the havoc she would leave in her wake.

  The home health nurse was with her mother in the front room. The young blonde woman glanced at Margie with barely concealed dislike as she entered the room. This one was called Cindy and had a chirpy voice that grated on Margie’s nerves.

  “We need to eat our dinner now, Mrs. Estep,” Cindy said. “We can’t let good food go to waste, now can we?”

  Cindy had draped a dish towel across the cardigan and housedress that encased the older woman’s sagging bosom, and was trying to coax her into eating a spoonful of tapioca pudding. Enid Estep’s hands, crippled with arthritis, lay curled into gnarled fists on each arm of the recliner in which she sat all day.

  “Where are you going, Mary Margaret?” Enid asked her daughter in a sharp tone, as Margie took her coat off the peg by the door.

  There was tapioca on her mother’s chin, glistening in amongst the few long whiskers growing there. It seemed to Margie that everything about her mother was worn out and failing, from the sagging, spotted lids of her pale blue eyes to her swollen ankles and misshapen feet. She was helpless, and something about this great vulnerability enraged Margie, made her snap out answers instead of being patient and kind.

  “Out for a walk,” Margie said, averting her eyes. “I won’t be gone long.”

  “She does this every night,” Enid said to Cindy. “I keep telling her she shouldn’t go out alone after dark, but she won’t listen.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Margie said through clenched teeth.

  “I’m going to Mountain View tomorrow,” Enid said to Cindy. “She can’t wait to get rid of me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Cindy said.

  Margie waited until the door was shut behind her before saying quietly, “It is true.”

  Margie and her mother lived in a small house on Lotus Avenue, in the shadow of the defunct Rodefeffer Glassworks building, which sat next to the railroad tracks by the Little Bear River. Most everyone on Lotus Avenue heated with coal, so the smell of coal smoke permeated the air. It had also permanently stained the peeling white paint on the houses built by the coal companies to house workers in the early part of the 20th century. It was, as Margie knew all too well, considered the wrong side of town, and only the poorest people lived there.

  Down at the end of the block Margie spied Sue Fischer unloading groceries from her car and carrying them into the house she shared with her husband Calvert. Cal and Sue had purchased one of the neighborhood’s small houses and fixed it up. Margie resented their optimism. As she approached Sue, the woman nodded at her in as bare an acknowledgement a civilized person could make without being rude, and Margie took that as an invitation to speak. Sue stopped, with six heavy bags of groceries dangling from her arms and hands, lips pursed and countenance straining to conclude as quickly as possible whatever conversation it was Margie wished to have.

  When Cal Fischer came out the front door a few minutes later to see what was keeping Sue he found his wife threatening to dip Margie in tar and roll her in feathers before forcibly running her out of town. As he hurried down the steps to the front walk Sue dropped her groceries in the snow and advanced on the small dumpy woman with what looked like every intention of following through on her threat.

  “What’s going on?” Cal asked as he rushed forward to restrain his wife.

  “Margie’s up to her old tricks,” Sue said bitterly. “She’s just picked the wrong person to try it on this time.”

  Margie just smirked and said, “You think about what I said and get back to me.”

  “I’ll see you in hell first,” Sue said, and Cal took his wife more firmly by the arm.

  “Sue!” he said, and she seemed to come to her senses.

  As Margie walked away Cal helped Sue gather up the grocery bags and retrieve the items that had rolled out when she dropped them.

  “What in the world did she say to you?” he asked her.

  “We’ll talk about it inside,” Sue said, looking around to see if anyone could have overheard her argument with Margie.

  “I really thought you were going to hurt her,” Cal said. “That’s not like you.”

  “Somebody needs to do something about that woman,” Sue said. “And if she doesn’t watch herself someday I will.”

  Margie walked up Pine Mountain Road past the newspaper office and bakery, which were closed for the evening. Davis’s Diner was open, and she could see some college students and a few regular customers seated inside, but no one with whom she had business dealings. She turned right, crossed the street, and walked down toward the college. She stopped in front of the post office, which up until a few weeks previously she had been postmistress of for over twenty years. It was closed as well, of course, so she could only stare into the dark interior and feel her resentment build. With a vengeful smirk on her face she drew out a thick handful of stamped, addressed envelopes from her coat pocket and dropped them into the mail box outside the building. To anyone watching it would have looked like a perfectly ordinary, innocent activity, when actually it was as wicked of an act as a madman poisoning a well.

  Maggie Fitzpatrick came out of Delvecchio’s IGA grocery store just as Margie was dropping her letters and although Maggie greeted her, it was no friendlier than Sue’s greeting had been. Margie felt stung by the snub; she had never done anything to actually harm Maggie, even though she easily could have. Margie didn’t think there was a person in town she didn’t have something on, some little nugget of unpleasantness she could take out and polish when her feelings were hurt. Maggie Fitzpatrick’s family provided a treasure trove of such gems.

  ‘That stupid policeman must have told her lies about me,’ Margie surmised. Her resentment at losing her job was still fresh in her breast, and her frustration at not being able to get back at the person she blamed was driving her mad with desire for revenge. Taking it out on Maggie was the next best thing to getting back at Police Chief Scott Gordon, so Margie lashed out with the only weapon she had left: over twenty years’ worth of vicious Rose Hill gossip.

  “Heard from Gabe?” she asked Maggie in a syrupy sweet voice.

&nbs
p; Maggie was so visibly taken aback that Margie knew her poison dart had found its mark.

  “Why would you even ask me that?’ Maggie said, and her face could be seen under the streetlight to become suffused by a deep red flush.

  “I bet you’d give a lot to know what really happened to Gabe,” Margie said.

  “You know, Margie,” Maggie said. “Scott told me about all the awful things you’ve done, and I would think you’d need to be on your best behavior right about now.”

  “I bet Scott would give a lot for you not to find out what really happened to Gabe,” Margie said with a cackle.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maggie said. “Stay away from me and mind your own business.”

  Margie felt all her anger and bitterness rise up and burst out, and it felt good to let it fly on someone instead of bottling it up and storing it somewhere deep, dark, and dank.

  “Everyone knows your father’s a drunk and Theo Eldridge was screwing your sister-in-law,” Margie said. “You’ve got no right to look down your nose at me.”

  Maggie advanced on Margie much the same way Sue Fischer had a few minutes earlier.

  “Don’t you hit me,” Margie yelled. “I’ll have you arrested.”

  “You listen to me, Margie Estep,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t pollute myself by touching you. Besides, there’s not a thing I could do to you that’s worse than what you’ve done to yourself. You’re hated in this town, truly hated, and there’s not a person here who’d miss you if you went to jail, which is where you belong.”

  “Maggie, what’s going on?” Matt Delvecchio said as he came out of his grocery store to see what the yelling was about. “Margie, are you making trouble again?”

  “You’ll be sorry you said that,” Margie said to Maggie, and then looked at Matt. “You’ll all be sorry.”

  But Maggie Fitzpatrick had already turned her back and walked away, crossing the street to her bookstore.

  “You better keep your nose clean, Margie,” Matt said. “You’ve just about worn out your welcome in this town.”

  “You better keep a closer eye on that wife of yours,” Margie snarled. “I hear she’s been spending a lot of time in the hardware store but she never buys anything.”

  “You’ll never learn, will you?” Matt said, shaking his head. “You better go on home now, and try to stay out of trouble.”

  Matt went back in the grocery store and Margie stomped back the way she came. She wished she had time to exact revenge on everyone who dared to underestimate her. She retraced her steps to the center of town where Pine Mountain Road and Rose Hill Avenue met. The heavy snow that was forecast began to fall, and the last vestiges of daylight disappeared behind the mountains to the west, on the other side of the Little Bear River.

  She crossed Rose Hill Avenue and trudged uphill, toward the higher streets in town where the homes were bigger and sat on wide, manicured lawns. From Lilac Avenue Margie crossed through Rose Hill City Park and lingered in amongst the trees at the far edge, where she could stand unobserved but with a very good view into some of the finer houses on Morning Glory Avenue. She was particularly interested in Morning Glory Circle, the cul de sac at the end of the street where the wealthiest Rose Hill residents currently resided.

  There in a Gothic monstrosity of a mansion lived Mamie Rodefeffer, the great granddaughter of the glassworks founder. The cranky old woman spent her days bullying her staff and walking around town acting like she owned it. She personally blamed Margie for any rise in the cost of stamps, and flung her mail on the counter in an imperious manner rather than put it through the slot like everyone else. Margie took her revenge on Mamie by making sure some of her mail never reached the intended recipients, and by occasionally stealing the old woman’s National Geographic magazines. She also knew something about Mamie she was pretty sure the old lady would not want to have revealed.

  In a Federal style home next to Mamie’s lived Knox Rodefeffer. He was Mamie’s nephew, president of the local bank, and his wife had recently been seriously injured in a car accident that Margie suspected Knox had engineered. She didn’t have any actual proof but sometimes, Margie had found, an accusation was worth as much as real evidence. Knox never lowered himself to come to the post office, preferring to send that whore of a secretary instead. Anyone who looked at her could tell she had the morals of an alley cat. Margie had heard from the cleaning woman at the bank the kinds of things found in Knox’s garbage can after he had closed door meetings with his secretary. Her imagination could easily fill in the blanks. Everyone knew Knox was poised to run for political office and couldn’t afford a scandal.

  At the very top of Morning Glory Circle sat a large Edwardian home in which lived Gwyneth Eldridge, one of the two Eldridge heiresses who inherited a fortune when their brother Theo was murdered back in January. Margie didn’t have anything on Gwyneth, but she knew plenty about Theo, and thought his sister might be willing to pay plenty to keep those secrets hidden. Gwyneth was positioning herself as a powerful influence in town, and would be anxious to keep any unsavory information out of her spotlight.

  The Eldridge Inn was next door to Gwyneth’s house, and the walled grounds of Eldridge College could be seen behind. Margie could see movement where she hoped to. She took a small pair of binoculars out of her pocket and focused them on the object of her interest. It all looked very promising.

  A few hours later Margie pulled her dead father’s coat close around her as she turned down the alley behind the fire station. The snow, flying sideways, stung her cheeks and ears. She made her way down the narrow lane by walking in the deep ruts that the city snowplow’s tires had made the night before. The tire tracks, already filled in with a couple inches of fine, white powder, ended behind a building that used to house a tire store, closed now for several years. Stacks of used tires still lined one side of the narrow lane, with many weeks worth of snow plowed and drifted up against them, creating a white wall of whitewalls.

  She had stayed away the night before, when the drop off was supposed to have taken place, not wanting to take the chance that anyone would be waiting for her. Better to come like this, before sunrise the next day, when most folks were still in bed or just waking up. Margie was certain her victim was just as anxious as she was to maintain confidentiality, and hardly likely to send the police to arrest her. With way more to lose than most people in this town, in terms of reputation, wealth, and power, she was certain this target would pay just about any price to eliminate the merest breath of scandal. The wealthy, socially prominent citizens of Rose Hill may have enjoyed a certain amount of power, but their status carried with it a vulnerability to scandal that Margie found irresistible.

  Margie’s focus was on a rusted metal barrel that stood next to a set of stairs leading up to Rose Hill Avenue. Down in the bottom of the barrel she found the grocery bag, placed just as she had instructed it be done. The weight of it seemed to indicate the money was in there, but she used a small flashlight to make sure. It was during this brief lack of attention to her surroundings that someone moved out of the shadows behind the wall of discarded tires, grabbed Margie around her waist, and clamped a gloved hand over her mouth and nose. That hand held a cloth soaked in a strong smelling chemical that choked her as it filled her lungs. Although Margie struggled she also gasped in the fumes, and passed out within seconds.

  Over the years, many people in Rose Hill had discovered that Margie Estep had a tendency to stick her nose in where she ought not, to seek out and spread vicious gossip, and to create malicious mischief wherever and whenever she could. These people often complained to each other that something should be done about Margie Estep. A few people in town also knew that Margie was dangerously malicious and vindictive, and incapable of feeling either empathy or remorse.

  One person in particular knew very well what awful acts Margie was capable of committing. This someone had finally had enough, was not going to put up with it anymore, and was willing to wait fo
r a long time in the cold and dark for the opportunity to finally do something about Margie Estep. Once the deed was done and Margie’s body was disposed of, all that was left to do was retrieve the money, eliminate the evidence, and let Mother Nature do the rest. Snow had a way of making everything in Rose Hill look clean and innocent, even the scene of a murder.

  Chapter Two – Tuesday

  Police Chief Scott Gordon swallowed some aspirin along with the last of his hot coffee as he drove down Peony Street toward the river. When he felt that familiar headache twinge nowadays, he didn’t take any chances lest it turn into another debilitating migraine. He was incapacitated by a brutal migraine during a crucial moment in a recent murder investigation, and he was determined that must never happen again.

  It may have seemed to outsiders that policing a town with one traffic light and just over 500 permanent residents would be a piece of cake, but lately the troubles in Rose Hill seemed to be multiplying as fast as the feral felines that threatened to overrun the town. Scott had a nagging feeling that the dark vein of corruption exposed by Theo Eldridge’s murder had not been eliminated by his death. He now believed it had always been there, flowing under the town of Rose Hill like an underground spring; now that he knew about it he seemed to see evidence of it everywhere.

  This morning Scott was providing security for 78-year-old Enid Estep, who was leaving her home of over fifty years to go live in the best retirement home in the county. Nurse Ruthie Postlethwaite, intake registrar of the Mountain View Retirement Home and a former schoolmate of Scott’s, was providing transportation. Enid’s good friend Lily Crawford was providing moral support. Scott was just making sure Enid’s daughter Margie didn’t interfere with the transition.

  Scott turned left on Lotus Avenue, the street closest to the railroad tracks and the Little Bear River. As Scott approached Enid’s house, he saw there was a “for sale” sign in her front yard, put there no doubt by realtor Trick Rodefeffer, a descendant of the glassworks founder. Scott knew Enid had deeded her home over to the owners of the retirement home in order to pay for her care.