A House to Die For (A Darby Farr Mystery)

by Vicki Doudera

  "Two-twenty Cove Road," she replied. "It's a cute little Cape."

  Darby shot a look at Laura, but the minister was gazing at the cove. "That was my parents' house"

  Laura turned to look at Darby, her gray eyes showing concern. "Darby, I had no idea. Let me go alone." "

  I can handle it. It's just a funny coincidence."

  Darby pulled off the road and parked the truck.

  The tricycle was still on the grass. Next to it was a brightly colored plastic lawnmower with a smiley face sticker on the handle. Despite the toys, the yard looked well kept. The lawn had been recently mowed and trimmed, and someone had planted pansies along the foundation.

  It hasn't changed at all, thought Darby. She remembered the fanlights on either side of the door, where her dog Rex always pressed his wet nose. There was the pear tree, laden in late summer with ripe Bartletts. She smiled at its graceful branches, even taller now, reaching toward the upstairs bedrooms, the one on the far right that had belonged to her parents ...

  She swallowed painfully and got out of the truck. The same mailbox, perhaps a bit more rusted, leaned at the edge of the driveway. There were the twin sugar maples, so flamboyantly orange come fall. Darby looked up at the front door. It led to the kitchen, she knew, and memories of opening that door and seeing her parents were almost more than she could bear. She saw her mother wearing a polka-dotted apron, standing at the stove concentrating on a complicated recipe. She pictured her father, seated at the little table, browsing happily through a sailing magazine. She shut the truck's door.

  The house represented the final straw, she realized. The tipping point that had led her to exile from Hurricane Harbor for a decade. Darby Farr thought back to that June night when she'd confronted Aunt Jane. Something had unhinged inside her, something furious and wild that had been bottled up for far too long

  "You sold my house!" she'd screamed.

  "Darby, really, it's just a house," Jane had said, her tone condescending. "And I made you money, for God's sake! Surely you are old enough to realize that it is simply a building, nothing more!"

  The voice of Laura Gefferelli broke her memory.

  "The shed is over here." She pointed to a small structure on the property line. That's new, Darby thought. Something the current owners must have erected ...

  "I'll go and ask for permission," Darby said.

  The door was opened immediately by a slim young woman with chin-length dark hair. A little girl sat coloring at a table, a box of sixty-four crayons open and waiting. Darby remembered sitting in the same spot and felt her knees grow weak.

  The little girl stopped coloring. She smiled up at Darby and showed her a picture of some kind of animal with stripes. Darby complimented her and turned to the girl's mother.

  "I'm Darby Farr, from Near & Farr Real Estate. Your father had a patient, Lucy Trimble, who is a friend of mine. I'm helping Lucy, and she needs her medical records. I wondered if I might have a look for her file."

  The woman looked relieved. "I was afraid you were coming to tell me we needed to move or something." She shrugged. "Sure, you can look at his stuff. That shed is full of boxes." She opened a door and pulled out a key chain. "The little one undoes the padlock."

  Darby thanked her and took the keys. She crossed the grass to where Laura was waiting.

  "I tried the key from your office-no luck," Laura said.

  Darby produced the keys she'd been given and tried the small one in the padlock. The lock unhinged and the door swung open, revealing stacks of cardboard banker's boxes. Fortunately, they were arranged alphabetically with the "T" labeled box in plain sight.

  Darby knelt and opened the box. She flipped through the files, searching for one with the name "Trimble" It has to be here, she thought, rifling through them again, this time more slowly.

  "Nothing," she said. "Perhaps there's another `T' box? Or it could be misfiled, I suppose..."

  Laura frowned. "It will take us all night to look through these boxes. Truthfully, I have some work I need to do at the church." "

  I guess the good news is that it's not going to be easy for Chief Dupont to find Lucy's file either," said Darby.

  A bark of a laugh echoed outside the small shed. "Nothing's easy for me," said the chief, his bulky form blocking the light. "Nothing at all, Darby Farr."

  Two hours later, Darby was seated on a comfortable upholstered chair in the cozy Kendall cottage with a bag of ice on her ankle. She'd showered, dressed, and driven the truck to meet Miles, and was now describing to him how Chief Dupont had caught her and Laura rifling through the files from Dr. Hotchkiss' practice.

  "I swear he followed us there, Miles," she fumed. "He made a point of telling me his secretary used to work for Hotchkiss. He wanted me to go looking for that file and he followed us."

  Miles handed her a glass of Merlot. "The chief is no dummy," he said. "He may look like one, but he's not." He lifted his glass. "Cheers"

  Darby lifted hers halfheartedly and took a sip. She leaned back in the chair. "I'm just so discouraged about the whole thing. Lucy didn't kill Emerson Phipps, I know that, but the evidence is starting to stack up against her."

  Miles sat in a chair across from Darby and took another sip of wine. "What do you say we try to recreate the crime? Our dinner is simmering gently on the stove, and this kind of thing is right up my alley, so to speak."

  Darby smiled. "So I'm to see Miles Porter, Investigative Journalist, in action?"

  "That's right." He grinned. "Now-the murder took place on what-Sunday, right?"

  "Yes"

  "Okay. Here's Fairview." He picked up a coaster and placed it on an ottoman. "And this pack of matches is Emerson Phipps." He placed the matches on the coaster. "Phipps drives his shiny BMW over to Fairview and parks it in the front. Maybe he goes in the house, maybe not."

  "The chief has found no evidence that Phipps entered the house."

  "So, he parks and then walks around the back, right?"

  "Right. He circled the property and went to the garden cottage, where quite possibly, the murderer was waiting." She thought a moment. "The chief has found no evidence of tire tracks, so that person-" Darby picked up a pencil, "-came on foot."

  "Or flew," joked Miles.

  She took the pencil and placed it by the coaster and matches. "We need something to represent the cottage."

  "See, you're getting into it," said Miles, reaching behind him for another coaster. "This one's different, will it do?"

  "I guess it will have to." Darby placed the pencil atop the coaster. "So the murderer is waiting in the cottage. Emerson Phipps enters the cottage and is killed. The murderer leaves, perhaps taking the time to plant evidence first."

  "Such as?"

  "The jumpsuit and the cigarettes. The killer left no fingerprints on the garden shears nor on the statue, and none were found on the cottage door. Obviously the killer touched these things, so he must have been wearing gloves."

  "Good point," noted Miles.

  "Now, the killer left only those things. Why?"

  "Because they incriminated only one person: Lucy Trimble." "

  11 Right"

  "Do you think we should be looking for someone who hates Lucy Trimble?" Miles asked.

  "I thought about that, but I sense that Lucy was just a convenient scapegoat for the killer, a way to throw the police off the track. I think we need to concentrate on the people who want Fairview."

  "Besides Phipps, there's Peyton, right?"

  "Peyton Mayerson, and the money men behind her. Peyton was pretty desperate after the planning board meeting. She needed to see her way out of that situation. She might have felt desperate enough to kill Phipps to ensure her position as the buyer."

  "But how would Peyton have known about the back-up? That planning board meeting didn't occur until the next day. On the day Phipps was killed, Sunday, Peyton still assumed she would be Fairview's owner."

  "Someone might have told her," Darby said. "Someone who knew
what was going to happen... "

  She snapped her fingers. "Soames Pemberton knew what would happen the next day. He had the old deed prohibiting liquor and he knew that would keep the planning board from granting the zoning change. Suppose he made Peyton Mayerson pay for the information, and when she realized that her plans were in jeopardy, she killed Emerson Phipps."

  "And framed Lucy?"

  "Exactly. She could have easily gone to her studio, stolen a jumpsuit and a pack of cigarettes, worn the suit to kill Phipps, and then planted the evidence."

  "When did Peyton arrive on Hurricane Harbor?" asked Miles.

  "Saturday morning. That gave her plenty of time to find out about Phipps, hatch a plan, and execute it the next day. Then when the planning board meeting denied her the changes, she put on a big act about how angry she was."

  Darby thought a moment. "Do you have a pad of paper? I need to write a few things down."

  Miles handed her a legal pad and a pen.

  "We need to see if anyone noticed Peyton going into Lucy's house on Saturday. That's when she would have stolen the jumpsuit and cigarettes."

  Darby looked at Miles. "And the paintings! Two of Lucy's works are missing from the studio. I wouldn't put it past Peyton to have helped herself to a little artwork while she was there."

  "Where was Lucy on Saturday? Wouldn't she remember if Peyton came to her house?"

  "I don't know." She added another note to her list. "We'll find out Lucy's whereabouts for Saturday.

  "Now Miles, the other suspect in this murder is Soames Pemberton. Fairview was built on property that was once his family's land. He lives in the woods that abut the estate, and I think the pending sale enraged him."

  "Is he the kind of person who would not only bash someone else's head in, but try to ruin the life of an innocent person in the meantime?"

  "Exactly," said Darby. "A person with nothing to lose." She stopped and sniffed the air. "Dinner smells fabulous. Are you sure we're not ready to eat?"

  Miles Porter smiled and rose to his feet. "We're ready," he said, proffering a hand to Darby. "Dinner is served."

  NINE

  "I'VE NEVER TASTED SUCH delicious chowder," Darby exclaimed, sitting back in her chair in the Kendall cottage's cozy dining room. "Haddock, right? And this bread is terrific, too. So moist"

  "I'm glad you like it," Miles said, smiling. "I must confess, I felt under some pressure, what with your being a gourmet cook and all..."

  "My mother was the gourmet cook," Darby corrected. "I can barely boil water." She took another sip of her wine and felt it warm her body. Outside it had started to rain, but in the cottage, she felt warm and safe.

  "Remember what you said about some mysteries being unsolvable?"

  Miles nodded. "Are you thinking that we won't figure out who killed Emerson Phipps?"

  "No. I was thinking about my parents and the mystery of their disappearance." She shifted slightly in her chair and met his earnest gaze.

  "I'd like to hear what happened, if you want to tell me," he said.

  Darby let out a long sigh. "It's been awhile-a long while-since I told anyone about that day. But I think somehow I need to. With the murder of Emerson Phipps I feel like my past is coming back at me, and I need to face this mystery before I can prove Lucy Trimble is innocent."

  She took a last spoonful of her soup and thought back to the day her world had changed, and then she began her story.

  "The summer I was thirteen, I was on top of the world. My dad ran the sailing program, my mother showed up with picnics of wonderful French delicacies, my parents were in love with life and with me, and I was the happiest kid in the world. It was a beautiful August afternoon. Classes were finished at the club and my dad asked me if I wanted to go with him for a sail. We had a sleek boat-an Alden 48-just gorgeous. But I was meeting Lucy Trimble to go swimming, so I said no. Just then my mother arrived. I remember she was wearing a pair of white shorts and a red-checked blouse. She was laughing and smiling, and when my dad mentioned that they could have a date, she said, `Why not?' They got in the dinghy and waved goodbye, and I pedaled off on my bicycle to meet Lucy. I never saw my parents again."

  "My God."

  "That afternoon, the winds picked up and the National Weather Service issued a small craft advisory. I was home by five o'clock, but I didn't begin to worry until six P.M. I called the harbor master and he called the Coast Guard. Chief Dupont must have heard the call, and he took me to stay with the Trimbles at Fairview. The next day Jane Farr flew up from Florida. I'd met her only once before. The Coast Guard searched for a week and recovered parts of the sailboat. But my parents' bodies were never found."

  Miles exhaled. "That's rough at any age, but at thirteen..." He shook his head. "So Jane stayed here with you?"

  "Yes. She had a real estate company in Sarasota, Florida, with her friend Helen Near. They opened a second office here and for a while Jane flew back and forth. Then they came to some sort of an agreement, I guess. Jane stayed with me and ran the office here, while Helen took care of their old clients in Florida" She thought a moment. "I haven't seen Helen Near in ages, but she's coming up for the memorial service."

  Miles reached across the table and put his hand on Darby's. "I can't imagine the shock of that day. It must have been awful"

  She nodded. "I felt numb for so long. My whole world collapsed without any warning, you know? One minute you're pedaling off to go swim in the quarry, the next you are hearing these men tell you that your parents are never coming back." She shuddered. "I think I got used to the feeling of being emotionless, and as I got older I looked for ways to anesthetize the pain. Alcohol and pot worked pretty well. Even so, there was a part of me that wanted to feel something, so I would push myself to do risky things, probably in the hope that I would snap out of the state I was in."

  "No one helped you through it? No grief counseling, no therapy?"

  "No" She squared her shoulders. "To tell you the truth, I wouldn't have participated even if it was offered. I felt so guilty." She took a deep breath. "I still do."

  "How could you feel guilty? What could you have done?"

  She turned to Miles and there were tears in her eyes. "I could have gone sailing with them. My father asked me. I should have gone, and then perhaps... "

  "Darby, you were just a child! Whatever happened to that boat would have happened regardless of whether you were aboard or not. Your dad was a world-class sailor! You would have been killed as well."

  "There were times I wished that's what had happened, believe me. I wanted to be dead for years after they died. And maybe it's foolish to think I could have saved the situation. But my mother was not a sailor. She'd worked on a tall ship, but purely as a decorative feature. My father used to say she couldn't tell the mast from the mizzon." Darby sighed. "So whatever situation they encountered, my father was alone. If I had been there, I might have made a difference. And maybe we all would have survived."

  Miles shook his head and smiled gently. "The `what-ifs' are the worst, aren't they?" He reached out and held Darby's hands in his, offering comfort in his touch that she welcomed. After a long moment, she rose and reached for Miles' dishes.

  "Sit down, I'll take care of it later," Miles said.

  "After such a great dinner? Not a chance."

  "Fine, then I'll help you and we'll see if we can work on solving this Hurricane Harbor mystery while we work, shall we?"

  As Darby washed the dishes, she told Miles about her appointments for the next day. "Alicia Komolsky, Emerson Phipps' only sibling, is coming in at ten A.M. And before that, at nine A.M., Peyton Mayerson plans to make an appearance." She thought a moment. "I'll check back in Jane's files, see if she has any more information on Peyton's partners. It might be worth it for me to drive down to Boston and talk to them."

  "Really?"

  "Sure. I mean, we can't count on Chief Dupont to do anything other than try Lucy. He is convinced she did it and isn't going to spend any energy or r
esources exploring other avenues." She paused. "I'll meet with Ms. Mayerson tomorrow and see where we stand on her purchase of the property now. I'll use that meeting to get more information about her and, most important, her whereabouts Sunday morning."

  "Peyton was the only one who really wanted Fairview, besides Phipps, that is," mused Miles.

  "Yes. Unless there's someone we don't know about. Someone who wanted Fairview so badly they were ready to kill for it." She grew thoughtful a moment. "I suppose someone could have paid Soames to do it. Someone like Peyton."

  "That's a thought. The sticking point is: how did Peyton know about Emerson Phipps?"

  "I don't know." She rinsed the last dish and handed it to Miles to dry. "Let's think for a moment. Who did know about Phipps? Mark, for sure, and my aunt. She was the one who drew up that backup offer. Lucy says she never looked at the documents, so she didn't know about Phipps until after the planning board meeting on Monday. But Jane knew, and Mark knew. Now, would either of them have wanted to tell Peyton Mayerson that there was another buyer waiting in the wings?"

  "Wouldn't that have been counterproductive? I mean, if Peyton found out, she might have backed right out of the contract."

  Darby turned to Miles, her eyes alive with excitement. "What if they wanted her to back out of the contract? Jane may have even offered Peyton money to back out. When Peyton refused, Jane had to think of another way to force her. She made sure that planning board approval by a specific date was a condition of the contract, by getting Peyton to sign that index-card amendment. Miles, that's it. Jane knew about those old restrictions-she must have, she was such a stickler for research that she would have found those deeds herself. She used them as a way to guarantee that the planning board would not grant that permit, and Peyton's contract would be void. She did it so that Emerson Phipps could be the buyer."

  "So you're saying that old deed wouldn't have come to light if your aunt hadn't found it?"

  Darby nodded. "I'm certain she was the one. It's unusual for a bank or lawyer to look back that far. I have a hunch that Jane Farr knew from old-timers about that long-forgotten prohibition, and all she had to do was find proof."