Grave Errors

by Carol J. Perry

  “It’s a possibility. Maralee, I’ve been thinking about that green-handled trowel in your vision. See the connection?”

  I’d already made that connection, and another one. Maybe the dirty boots in that plastic bag in Emily’s closet had walked in the soil she’d bagged and labeled. The next question was—exactly where had she and James walked that day?

  “I’ll call Pete right away,” I told my aunt. “He’ll want to look at these books.”

  “Of course. He can keep them as long as he needs to. Oh, and one more thing. The name of the agency in Florida where James worked? It’s True Shores.”

  I hurried upstairs to my apartment, took off my shoes, tossed my jacket onto the bed and speed-dialed Pete.

  “Hi babe.” There was a smile in his voice. “I was just going to call you. Got a couple of pieces of new information on your friend Dorothy’s sister.”

  “Hi yourself. Aunt Ibby has dug up some new information too.”

  “Great. Shall we get together and compare notes? Maybe over hot dogs and beer at Greene’s Tavern?”

  “Perfect. See you in about an hour?”

  Greene’s Tavern is one of our favorite places. It’s a kind of out-of-the-way waterfront version of Cheers—where everybody knows your name—def initely not a tourist destination. Sometimes we join the gang at the bar and get involved in the conversation and other times we sit in a cozy booth where nobody bothers us except to refill a glass or bring more food.

  We chose a booth. “You first,” I said, after we’d ordered hot dogs and light beer. “And thanks for checking into this. I appreciate it, and I know Dorothy will too.”

  “Maybe you won’t be satisfied with what I’ve learned. We checked again with her doctor. He’s in Boston. She wasn’t a regular patient, and she told him she’d used sleeping pills before. She was having a lot of trouble sleeping and it was affecting her work. He’d warned her about taking more than one pill at a time. The M.E. says she had taken three—with quite a lot of alcohol. We don’t think she was trying to kill herself. She could have taken the whole bottle if she’d wanted to do that. Doc says she just wanted to sleep and overdid it.” He put his elbows on the table and looked into my eyes. “I stopped by at Dorothy’s place and photographed those letters. Frankly, I don’t think they tell us anything new. Emily’s death was an accident. Pure and simple. Just as we said in the first place. I hope we can ease Dorothy’s mind about it. I don’t know how I’d feel if it was my sister, Marie. I’d probably be looking for a reason too.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure how this ties in with the sleeping pills, or if it even does, but the man Emily had a date with that night—James Dowgin—had taken her with him on a soil sample project. He had been getting books from the library about the environment—especially about hazardous waste. She read some of the same books and now they’re both dead. At least she is, and most likely he is too. Aunt Ibby is wondering if you found one of those library books in Emily’s apartment.”

  He leaned back against the high-backed booth. Cop voice. “No. But I wasn’t looking for one. It was an accident scene, remember?” He frowned. “They both worked for Happy Shores Real Estate. That where you’re going with this?”

  “My friend at city hall says there’s a problem in the wild woods. That’s where the mall is supposed to be. Happy and Trudy Shores are ready to start construction there. And Pete? When he disappeared James Dowgin worked for a Florida agency called True Shores. Another coincidence?”

  He didn’t say anything right away, just took a bite of his hot dog and looked thoughtful.

  “You said you had a couple of pieces of new information,” I persisted. “Want to tell me what the other one is?”

  He hesitated. “I will, but what you just told me makes me rethink what I was going to say.”

  I waited for him to continue. “Is it about James?”

  “Yes. I was going to tell you he’s in the clear on all this. He didn’t keep that date with the girl after all. We checked with DMV and DOT. His car showed up passing through toll booths heading south in the late afternoon that day. Traced him all the way down to North Carolina. No way he could have come back in time to see her that night.”

  “She must have been disappointed,” I said. “Maybe that’s why she thought she needed pills to get to sleep.”

  “Maybe. But all this about both of them studying books about soil contamination makes me wonder . . .”

  “About?”

  “About a problem with the dirt in the wild woods. I’ll be checking on that first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “My city hall friend said there was some talk about endangered birds.”

  “I’ll check on it.” Cop voice was gone. Conversation about Emily Alden, True Shores and soil samples was over. He smiled. “Want another hot dog?”

  CHAPTER 18

  It was still fairly early when we got back to Winter Street from Greene’s Tavern. “Think your aunt would mind if I come in and grab those library books you told me about?” Pete asked as he pulled into the parking space next to the garage.

  I looked toward the house. “Kitchen lights are still on,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

  Aunt Ibby was, as I’d guessed, wide awake—and busy. Even before she answered our knock at her kitchen door, I was aware of a wonderful smell. “She’s baking,” I said.

  “I’m available for taste-testing.” He sniffed the fragrant air as the door swung open.

  “Come in,” my aunt said. “You’re just in time to try Tabitha’s vanilla bread pudding.”

  “I came to borrow the library books,” Pete said, “but I’d never turn down an offer like that one.”

  The books were still stacked on the table and Pete silently browsed through the thickest one while Aunt Ibby topped two bowls of the hot pudding with hefty dollops of whipped cream—a large bowl for Pete, a smaller one for me.

  She waved a large wooden spoon toward me. “I’d like your opinion.” She pointed the spoon in Pete’s direction. “Tell me what you think.”

  “I think we may need to take another look at it.”

  “The pudding?” I asked.

  “The Alden thing. The late date. It doesn’t add up quite the way we figured.” He put the book aside and picked up his spoon. “Tabitha scores again. Pudding is perfect.”

  I waited for Pete to say something more about “taking another look,” but he grew quiet again, eating slowly and at the same time sneaking the occasional peek at the text in the open book.

  Aunt Ibby didn’t join us at the table, claiming she’d already done quite enough tasting during the preparation process. She began her usual orderly kitchen cleanup, while I nibbled at the delicious, but highly caloric dessert.

  I put down my spoon. “It’s kind of an unusual thing to try so late at night.”

  Pete looked up. “The Alden thing? The late date?”

  “No. The pudding.”

  We both laughed at that and Pete closed the book, putting it back onto the pile. “I’ll just take these along with me and try concentrating on one thing at a time.” He stood and carried his empty bowl to the sink. “Thanks, Miss Russell. That was great. And thanks for digging up the library connection.”

  “Just a minute, Pete,” she said, opening a drawer. “Here’s a nice bag to carry them in. Maralee gave it to me.” She handed him the canvas bag with the H.S. monogram on it. “I hope the books will be useful.”

  “Could be,” he said. “They just could be. Walk me to the door, Lee?”

  Licking a bit of stolen whipped cream from his whiskers, O’Ryan led the way out of the warm kitchen and outside into the early fall chill. Pete put the bag of books down on the steps and pulled me close for a lingering good night kiss which spoke volumes.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he whispered. “Be careful. I love you, you know.”

  “Love you too,” I said. “Be careful.”

  Turning to go back inside, I looked around
for O’Ryan. There was only a pale sliver of moon and a little light from the street lamps on Oliver Street filtered through the trees. I noticed the white cat first, then watched O’Ryan as he crept along the fence top until the two faced one another. They stood there, silently, about a foot apart. I listened attentively, wondering if the usually talkative O’Ryan would break the silence. He didn’t. As I watched, the two cats simultaneously nodded to one another. O’Ryan jumped to the ground on his side of the fence, while the white cat disappeared into the next yard.

  “Come on, cat,” I said, opening the door and waiting for him to enter ahead of me. “What was that all about?”

  “Mmm—mmm,” he said, looking back at me and starting up the stairs to my apartment. I took that to mean “none of your business,” and didn’t pursue the matter. O’Ryan headed straight for the bedroom and curled up at the foot of the bed.

  Tired, but not quite ready for sleep yet, I donned pajamas and opened my laptop for just one more search for information on the elusive James. I found an H. J. Dowgin listed under Massachusetts Real Estate Agents. It was a bare bones listing, showing a black-and-white photo—as Emily had observed in her letter, he was good looking. He had a valid real estate license and a degree in Environmental Science. I recognized the e-mail address as the one I’d seen on the advertising material in the canvas bag. It belonged to Happy Shores Real Estate and there was no point in trying to contact him there. Or most likely anywhere. I closed up the laptop and joined the sleeping cat in the bedroom.

  River’s ideas about feng shui for my apartment included the fact that I shouldn’t be able to see my own reflection from the bed, so I kept the full-length mirror angled accordingly. I climbed into bed, careful not to disturb the sleeping cat and took a quick glance at the mirror. It reflected, as it was supposed to, one corner of the kitchen counter, part of the Lucite table and one of the tall windows. What it was not supposed to reflect was a white cat sitting on the fire escape outside, its nose against the pane.

  “Jesus, O’Ryan!” I squeaked, startled. “What’s your friend doing out there?”

  The big yellow cat opened sleepy eyes, stretched and padded across the covers to where I sat, bolt upright, peering into the mirror. The white cat’s reflection, unmoving, stared back at me. O’Ryan looked from the mirror to me and back, then returned to his position at the foot of the bed and lay down.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I prodded him with my foot. “Tell it to go away.”

  “Naaa,” he complained.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake. I’ll do it, lazy bones.” I stepped into the kitchen, flicked on the light switch and approached the window. No white cat. “It’s gone,” I grumbled, “not that you care.” I turned off the light and climbed back into bed “Now maybe I can get some sleep.” I looked once again into the mirror. The white cat was still there.

  It took several double-takes—mirror to window, window to mirror before I figured it out. The mirror cat was a vision. There was no cat on the fire escape.

  The cat in the mirror blinked away just then, and the reflection showed the things that were supposed to be there.

  The visions have always been disturbing. They’ve often been frightening. But I couldn’t remember a time when they’d been so confusing. None of them seemed to have any logical relationship to one another. There was the woman in the bathtub. Emily Alden. There was a green-handled garden trowel. Whose was it? There were some shoes. Mine, Dorothy’s, the giant display shoe and a pair of dirty work boots. And now a white cat who might live next door.

  “Well,” I said to the cat at the foot of the bed, who was clearly not listening, “I promised to tell Pete about any visions I might have. It’ll be interesting to see if he can make any sense out of this one.”

  In the morning I didn’t wait for Pete’s promised call, but phoned him as soon as I reached my assigned space in the Tabby parking lot.

  “What’s up? Everything okay?” There was concern in his voice.

  “Everything’s okay,” I said. “Nothing to worry about, but there was another—thing—in my mirror and I promised I’d tell you whenever I saw one.”

  “Sure. Tell me about it. Was it a bad one?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just want to see if maybe you can figure it out—if you can connect it somehow to what’s going on.”

  “I’ll try. What did you see?”

  I told him first about the white cat—that O’Ryan and I had seen it more than once and that O’Ryan seemed to like it—or to at least tolerate it trespassing on his back fence.

  “The cat was there—when you were seeing things?” he asked.

  “Yes. In the mirror it was sitting on the fire escape. Looking in my kitchen window. But of course, it wasn’t really there at all.”

  “That’s funny,” he said.

  “It is? What’s funny about it?”

  “Not funny ha-ha. Funny strange. Funny damned strange as a matter of fact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a cat like that—at least it’s a white cat—that lives in the Alden woman’s apartment house. I saw it when I investigated her death in the first place and I saw it again when I went over there to see those letters from her sister that Dorothy has. It was outside on that little balcony that runs along the top floor. I asked Dorothy if it was hers and she said it was just a stray that hangs around there. She figured somebody in the house must be feeding it.”

  I thought about that. “That’s interesting,” I said. “It doesn’t make things any less confusing, but it does kind of tie things together a little bit, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh babe, I’m sorry. None of that vision stuff makes a lot of sense to me anyway, you know? But I guess the cat must have some connection to the dead girl you saw. Right?”

  “Yes. And it’s probably connected to the shoes and the trowel too somehow.”

  Probably. Somehow. Maybe.

  CHAPTER 19

  I locked the ’vette and, with an eye toward a gray, overcast sky, hurried to the diner entrance. I’d already decided to skip breakfast with the group, but instead ordered coffee and a Danish to go. With a quick smile and a wave to my class, already gathered at their regular table, I hurried through the side entrance onto the main floor of the Tabby.

  I knew that I needed some time at my desk to pull together plans for our Day of the Dead event, especially in regard to integrating them with my ongoing TV production lesson plan—which, after all, was what they’d all signed up and paid for. Also, I thought that an hour or so of intense concentration on things academic might make the whole white cat, green trowel, girl in the bathtub mess recede into the background.

  I paused at the mezzanine entrance, looking around the silent, high ceilinged, vast expanse of the place, imagining what it must have looked and sounded like back in the days when it was Salem’s largest, and undoubtedly most important, shopping destination. An elevator dominated the wall space on my right and I was startled when the bell chime sounded and the over-the-door light flashed indicating an approaching passenger. The door slid open and Rupert Pennington stepped out.

  “Ms. Barrett. Glad you’re here. Can you spare me a moment of your valuable time?”

  So much for my hour of intense concentration.

  “Of course, sir.” I put my coffee cup and the paper bag containing my meager breakfast on the corner of my desk, and indicated one of the handsome vintage shoe department bentwood chairs. “Please sit down.” Avoiding looking at the giant shoe over my desk, I pulled up my own modern and very comfortable leather swivel chair and sat facing him.

  “Ms. Barrett,” he began, “a matter of some concern has come to my attention.” He stopped and grew silent for what seemed to me to be a very long moment. The Tabby’s executive director at a loss for words was something I’d not seen often.

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Pennington?”

  He leaned forward and an uncharacteristic frown crossed his face. “I�
�m not exactly sure, Ms. Barrett,” he said, “but it has to do with you—or at least with your class—so I thought it best to bring it to your attention.”

  “Go on.” I reached for my coffee.

  “Actually, the matter is of enough concern to have initiated the distribution of the alarm pendants.”

  It was my turn to frown. “And this has to do with me? What in the world is going on?”

  “The school has received a threat. A veiled threat to be sure, but one which causes me to worry, Ms. Barrett.”

  “Have you called the police? What kind of threat?”

  “I have contacted a private security firm,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be a police matter.”

  “If you think it requires an alarm system, it’s probably a police matter. Tell me what this is all about.” I glanced pointedly at my watch. “My class will be arriving soon.”

  I knew I sounded bossy. Even rude. But I didn’t like the sound of this “matter of concern” one little bit.

  He reached into his inside jacket pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “This was delivered by a messenger the day before yesterday. You may read it.” He pushed the thing across the desk.

  The message was printed in a standard typeface. It was short.

  Your school is involved in something that’s none of your business. Tell that nosy teacher to stop asking questions about the accident. Just stick to the graveyard and stop snooping into other people’s personal problems.

  He pointed to the paper. “You see why I think it involves you and your class. You’re the only ones involved with a graveyard. Have you been asking questions about an accident of some kind? Something that might be regarded as—pardon my asking—snooping into someone else’s personal problems?”

  I ignored the question. “I’m going to call Pete. May I keep this letter? I’m sure it’s nothing serious., but I’d like to have him check it out all the same.”

  “Of course, if you think it’s important. But I must ask you to be discreet, Ms. Barrett.” He stood, unsmiling. “I trust you’ll be careful not to bring any further unpleasant publicity to the academy.”