Grave Errors

by Carol J. Perry

  He leaned back in his chair. “What’s a Mukluk?”

  I laughed. “The boots Dorothy had on today. Did you notice them?”

  “I did. You should get some of those.”

  “You like them?”

  “Yeah. They look nice. You say you saw the big black shoe. The one that’s showed you things before, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Showed you anything lately? Anything you haven’t mentioned to me?”

  “One little thing,” I admitted. “It doesn’t make any sense either.”

  “What was it?”

  “A garden trowel. Like the one Aunt Ibby uses, but hers is old, with worn-off black paint on the handle. The one I saw in the shoe is new looking, with a green handle.”

  He reached for his notebook. “That was it? Just a trowel? What’s the background? A workbench? A garden? Where do you think this trowel was?”

  I closed my eyes. Brought the picture back to memory. “No background to speak of. It’s just stuck in some dirt.”

  “Sandy dirt? Muddy dirt? Rich dirt?”

  Pete’s attention to tiny details is so specific sometimes I find it hard not to smile, let alone laugh outright. But with a straight face I said, “Brown dirt. Maybe what you’d call rich brown dirt.”

  “A green handle.”

  “Right.”

  Pete was quiet then, just scribbling in the notebook. He flipped back a few pages, then a few more. He put the notebook down and looked up. “Well, you about ready for our big dinner date?”

  “Sure. Just need a jacket.” I stood and headed back to my bedroom. “Aren’t you going to tell me what that was all about? All the note taking?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “That? That was nothing. You should see me take notes when I’m really serious about something.”

  I put on my favorite NASCAR jacket and jammed on a matching cap. “Okay. I guess you’ll tell me eventually anyway.”

  “Probably will. I think I need to be more careful about what I say though. Was my letting the cat out of the bag this morning about Dorothy’s sister really awkward for you?” O’Ryan looked up at Pete on hearing the word “cat,” and, acknowledging the look, Pete bent and patted the big cat’s head. “Was Dorothy as annoyed as she sounded?”

  “Not really. She seemed surprised about you being a detective, but after all, on such short acquaintance and within the student-teacher relationship—it really isn’t any of her business who I’m dating, is it?”

  “Guess not. Good night, O’Ryan. We’re off on our wildly exciting date. Take care of things.”

  I turned off the kitchen light and Pete and I left the apartment through the living room and down the back stairs. We passed Aunt Ibby’s kitchen door and Pete paused. “Think your aunt would like to come with us?”

  “Not home. Library Board meeting. She keeps busy.”

  “She’s amazing. Hell of a researcher.”

  “I know. I’ve been keeping her busy working on finding the guy who took Emily on a soil-sample collecting assignment.”

  We’d just stepped outside when the proverbial lightbulb went on over my head. I stopped short just outside the garden fence. “I’ve got it. Soil samples. Shoes. Work boots.”

  Pete had stopped walking at the same time I had. “What soil samples? What guy? What are you talking about?”

  “Dorothy has letters from her sister. She showed them to me. Emily was working with a real estate agent who took her on some kind of soil sample dig. She wore boots. The ones in my vision.”

  “Letters from her sister, huh? Think she’d let us take a look at them?”

  “Are you thinking she could be right about Emily’s death? That maybe it wasn’t an accident?”

  We stopped at a traffic light. “Which way?” Pete asked. “Do you feel like burgers, chicken strips or fish sandwiches?”

  “Chicken, I guess. Are you going to reopen the case?”

  We headed for dinner with the Colonel, my questions unanswered.

  CHAPTER 13

  We brought our chicken strips with us to the nearby city of Marblehead’s justly famous Deveraux Beach. We’d passed on the Colonel’s soft drink menu, opting instead for the beach restaurant’s famous lime rickeys. (It’s a New England thing.) The parking lot there closes at ten o’clock, so when we’d finished our dinners that left us a leisurely hour for our moonlight walk. There was just a sliver of moon, but the clear sky was bright with stars.

  We walked the crunchy sand in companionable silence, arms around each other’s waists, listening to slow rolling waves making their rhythmic landings. Pete spoke first. “Did you get his name?”

  I knew who he meant. I’d been thinking about H. James Dowgin too, quite likely dead in a Florida swamp. “Henry James Dowgin,” I said. “Only he goes by James or J.D. Dorothy asked the Shoreses about him and all she got was James Dow-something. Seems Mr. Shores interrupted his wife and said that they didn’t give information about employees. I tried too, with a phone call, and they wouldn’t tell me either. Anyway Aunt Ibby figured it out and located him in Florida—but he’s probably dead.”

  He stopped short. “You’re full of surprises today. Dead how?”

  “Accident. Another stupid accident. They say he disappeared while he was bass fishing near the Everglades. Police down there say most likely a gator got him. There were a lot of them around.” I’d stopped walking too, and stepped back so that I could face him. “Seems like a weird coincidence, doesn’t it? A guy who worked for Happy Shores Real Estate dying accidentally in water. His friend Emily, who also worked for Happy Shores, dying accidentally in water. Oh, but you don’t believe in coincidences, do you?”

  He didn’t answer right away, just stood there quietly on the sand as the waves rolled in and the stars sparkled. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do a little checking. I’ll talk to Dorothy. Maybe drop in at the Shores agency.” He put both hands on my shoulders. “I’ll check around and you’ll keep your pretty little nose out of it. Promise?”

  “So you agree with me? That there’s something fishy about Emily’s death?”

  “Nope.” We began walking again. “I agree with the chief and the medical examiner that accidents happen. I just want you and your aunt to stop snooping around. Somehow you two wind up getting into trouble whenever you play girl detective.”

  “I agreed to help Dorothy find out what happened to her sister, so I can’t just drop the matter,” I said. “How’s this? I’ll tell you every little thing I learn. And everything Aunt Ibby learns too. You said yourself she’s a great researcher. If there’s nothing there, she’ll know it soon enough.”

  “You’ll tell me about those visions too, if you have any more? Even if you think they don’t make sense?”

  I hesitated. Pete is really uncomfortable about my “seeing things.” It had taken me a long time to tell him about my being a scryer at all, let alone going into detail about the things I see. I don’t even always tell Aunt Ibby about them. I thought about things the visions have shown me, and wished I could erase the memory of some of them.

  “I’ll try to,” I said finally. “I’ll honestly try to do that, Pete.”

  He pulled me close and tipped my face up for a long kiss. “That’s good enough. Just please be careful. Now let’s head back to the parking lot before they tow my car away. Want to run?”

  So that’s what we did. We ran all the way back to the restaurant. It felt wonderful to breathe that good salt air, to feel my feet pounding across the hard-packed sand, to cleanse my brain of visions of the dead woman in the bathtub, the muddy boots, the green trowel, the tree-bound cemetery orb, and of poor H. James Dowgin, all alone in a faraway gator-infested swamp.

  We didn’t talk about Emily or Dorothy or letters or visions or any of those disturbing topics on our way home to Winter Street. Pete turned on the radio and rolled down the windows. We rode through darkened streets, sometimes humming along with the music, sometimes laughing about remembered good times
we’d shared, sometimes just quietly enjoying being together. All in all, it had been a good date.

  Pete dropped me off in front of the house with a quick kiss and a promise to call the next day. I let myself in, patted O’Ryan who’d been waiting just inside the door as usual, and paused at the entrance to Aunt Ibby’s living room. The lights were out and all was quiet so I assumed she’d either gone to bed or was still out with Mr. Pennington. I followed the cat up the two flights to my apartment.

  It was still too early to go to bed, so I turned on the kitchen TV, made a pot of hazelnut decaf and put on flannel pajama bottoms and an old race week T-shirt of Johnny’s. I put a handful of kitty treats into O’Ryan’s bowl, filled a mug with coffee, put a couple of cowboy cookies on a paper napkin and sat down at the table to watch the late news.

  The program was already under way and Scott Palmer was at the anchor desk. That was a surprise. Scott usually broadcast from off site—either sports or news stories. I wondered if he’d received a promotion or if he was filling in for the regular announcer. The station manager, Bruce Doan, likes to get as much work as humanly possible from every employee.

  Whichever it was, it seemed to have been a pretty slow news day in Salem. Once he’d finished reading from the national wire service—which was largely political and largely pretty boring—he told the WICH-TV audience about a puppy being rescued from a storm drain, a local man shooting a hole-in-one at the Salem Country Club and showed a video of a shouting match between a couple of city councilors at their weekly meeting. O’Ryan hopped up onto the chair across from mine and, putting his paws on the edge of the table, focused golden eyes on the TV screen. He’s not really very fond of Scott, so I knew there must be something of interest to him in the newscast.

  “What is it, big boy?” I asked, and turned the sound up a tad. “Want to hear the commotion at City Hall?”

  Some of the words had been bleeped out, but the general gist of the argument between the two seemed to center on some land acquisition. Ho-hum. But when I heard the words “Wildwood Plaza” the late news had my full attention too.

  Apparently there was some question about the paperwork the land owners had filed with the city, and after the short clip ended, Scott announced that the attorney for the property owners had promised to “clear the matter up quickly.”

  “Drawings of the proposed mall are nearly complete,” Scott said, “and here’s a look at one of the preliminary sketches, released today especially for the viewers of WICH-TV, courtesy of Mr. Harold Shores.”

  Must be back from his cross country search for retail stores for the new mall.

  A smiling Happy, aka Harold, wearing a plaid sport jacket, gestured to a drawing board where a picture of a row of stores with a sort of Tudor architecture look was displayed. He was a well-built man, a good head taller than Scott, with blond hair worn Donald Trump style. I thought of the blond man holding a scepter who’d shown up in my Tarot reading. “Notice the trees bordering the parking lot,” he said. “We plan to preserve as many of the lovely old trees as possible, and the paving of the central parking lot will begin just as soon as permitting is complete.”

  Scott thanked the man, reminded viewers to stay tuned for the weather and sports, to be followed by Tarot Time with River North where the feature film would be The Wolf Man. I remembered showing that classic horror film back when I was hosting Nightshades. I realized that River must still be working the mystic theme. Maria Ouspenskaya was fabulous in that movie as the fortune-teller.

  “Shall we watch River, O’Ryan? Let’s see how my costume looks on her tonight.”

  The cat seemed agreeable to that idea. He hopped down from the chair and headed for the bedroom. I watched for a few more minutes before following him. Wanda the Weather Girl forecast a cool day, with a thirty percent chance of showers and gave the coordinates of the growing tropical storm which she said didn’t yet threaten the U.S. mainland.

  I turned off the kitchen TV, turned off the light and joined O’Ryan in bed. Before turning on the wall-hung screen over my bureau, I checked my voice mail. There was a call from Dorothy which must have come when Pete and I were walking the beach and I’d left my handbag in his car.

  “Hi. Lee? Something happened. I got another letter today. It’s from Emily. My house sitter forwarded it and I guess I told you everything takes forever in False Pass. Anyway, Emily wrote this letter before she died.” Nervous giggle. “I mean of course it was before she died. Anyway, that guy . . . James . . . the guy who took her on that soil sample thing . . . he did get in touch with her after all. She was happy about it. They had a date and it looks to me as though it could have been for the night she died. I’ll bring the letter to class tomorrow so you can tell me what you think I should do about it. Call me. Bye.”

  I looked at the clock. It was far too late to call her—to call anyone. I pulled up the covers, hugged my cat and listened to the intro music for Tarot Time.

  Danse macabre. The dance of death.

  CHAPTER 14

  I fell asleep before The Wolf Man had found his first victim and missed River’s card readings entirely. I did catch a glimpse of my friend wearing my late mother’s off-shoulder embroidered blouse, Aunt Ibby’s vintage-red broomstick skirt and plenty of beads, rings and bracelets. The TV was still on when I woke at six o’clock the next morning. Turning it off, I looked around the room for O’Ryan. He was absent. I was sure he’d be downstairs with my early-rising aunt. By now she’d be halfway through the Globe crossword and he’d be halfway through a big bowl of kitty kibble.

  Yawning, I padded down the hall to my bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face, brushed my teeth and thought about last night’s message from Dorothy. So Emily had made a date with James—and it may have been for the night she died. Pete will want to know about that.

  I thought about Emily, happy that she’d heard from James after all, getting ready for her date. I took a good hard look at my surroundings, and thought about the pristine, uncluttered space I’d seen so recently at Dorothy’s apartment. No cabinet under the pedestal sink, no vanity with commodious drawers. Where did they put their bathroom stuff? Unless there was a secret stash somewhere of hairspray, perfumes, nail polish, day cream, night cream and all the other innumerable helpers women use, I couldn’t figure out how Emily—and now Dorothy—managed in that cool, barren, black-and-white space.

  My own collection of mascara wands, eyebrow pencils, lip, lid and blusher brushes were stored on the lavender vanity top in an antique sun-purpled Victorian glass spoon holder. Like Dorothy/Emily, I favored fluffy white towels. Two of them hung on a chrome bar and the rest were displayed in a narrow glass-fronted linen closet. Hairdryer, razor and other electrical devices are hidden along with toilet tissue, personal products and paper towels in the cabinet under the sink. Combs and brushes were in one drawer and a few of Pete’s necessities are in another. The everyday stuff was arranged, more or less neatly, on a couple of blue glass shelves. Pretty darned normal, I’d say.

  I took a shower, washed my hair, plugged in the dryer and combed and teased the curly mass into a semblance of order. Since jeans had so far been the daily choice of all of the women in my class, I pulled a pair of Guess low-rise black ones from the closet, paired them with a yellow silk blouse and black leather booties. The breakfast options in my kitchen hadn’t improved any since the previous day, so I headed down the back stairs to where I knew there’d be a full larder.

  I knocked on Aunt Ibby’s kitchen door with visions of cinnamon buns and eggs benedict and vanilla French toast dancing in my head—and effectively chasing away any lingering unpleasant thoughts. Aunt Ibby called “Come in, Maralee. You’re here at the right time! I have popovers in the oven!”

  The welcome aroma of coffee drifted into the hall the moment the door swung open. My aunt, potholder in hand, stood in front of the stove, watching the flashing numerals on the oven timer counting down. O’Ryan, by her side, watched too. Within minutes I was seated at
the old, round oak kitchen table with a mug of coffee, two perfectly browned, steaming hot, high-hatted, crusty, hollow-inside popovers with butter melting into homemade raspberry jam. I sighed with pleasure. “It just doesn’t get much better than this,” I mumbled, mouth full.

  “I’m so glad you like them. Haven’t made any in years.” She spread apple butter onto hers. “This is Tabitha’s recipe.”

  “I’d like to surprise Pete by making these some morning.” I paused, thinking of the conversation we’d had on the beach. “But I promised I’d try not to surprise him with—other stuff.”

  “They’re easy. I’ll show you how. What kind of other stuff?”

  “About Dorothy and her sister. I promised I’d tell him everything you and I found out about it . . . even though he doesn’t like us snooping around at all, you know. I told him what you’d learned about James Dowgin, and I’ve learned something new about him too.”

  “About James?”

  I told her what the message from Dorothy had said about the long-delayed letter. “I’ll see it today at school. What do you think?”

  “Have you told Pete about it?”

  “Not yet. It was really late when I played the voice mail.”

  “I think it could be quite important. It would put this James person at the scene of the crime, wouldn’t it?” she said. “If there was a crime, I mean.”

  “It would,” I agreed. “If there was a crime. And there’s another thing. Pete asked me to tell him about any . . . um . . . visions I might see.”

  “Uh-oh. What did you say to that? I know you’re timid about that topic where he’s concerned.”

  “I told him I’d try. That’s the best I could do. It’s hard enough to talk to you and River about them.”

  “I’m sure he understands. More coffee?” She poured the lovely stuff into my mug as she spoke. “I do think though that perhaps you should tell him exactly what’s contained in the letter Dorothy told you about.”