Stay Tuned for Murder

by Kennedy, Mary

  “So. Quite a night,” he said, sinking into an armchair. Rafe is catnip to women. It’s impossible not to pick up on his sexy vibes. I’m not even sure he knows he’s giving them out. (But sometimes he tosses me a little smile, flashing his dimples, that tells me he knows exactly what he’s doing.)

  Nick whipped out his notebook, pen in hand. You wouldn’t think a break-in would be big news, but there’s not much crime in Cypress Grove, which was one of the reasons I had moved here. “Vera Mae, can you tell me what the guy was looking for? Do you have any valuables in the house?”

  Before Vera Mae could answer, I turned to her. “Wait a minute. It was a guy? You’re sure of that, right?”

  She nodded. “I think so, but I didn’t really get a good look at him. He was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie. I practically collided with him. He was standing in the living room, and like an idiot, I’d left all the lights off. I was coming in from my tai chi class—”

  “You do tai chi?” Nick asked, pen poised.

  “Not willingly,” Vera Mae said with a chuckle. I could feel a little warmth coming back into her fingertips. “Lark gave me a month’s worth of classes for my birthday. Don’t put that in the paper, sonny.” She waggled her fingers at Nick. “I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  “I won’t.” Nick grinned at me. I felt a little glimmer of relief. If Vera Mae could crack a joke, that meant she was back to her old self.

  “Go on,” Rafe urged her.

  “I came home earlier than usual. I wasn’t crazy about the instructor they had tonight. And I walked right in on him. He nearly knocked me over, he was so eager to get out of here.”

  “You came home early,” I said, thinking. “So that means that maybe he knew your schedule and he figured he’d have the place to himself?”

  “Maybe.” Vera Mae shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “Or maybe it was just a random selection,” Rafe said. “This place is an easy target, no outdoor lights, no security system.” He looked at the thin door with the sixties-style diamond windows at the top and probably figured the same thing I did. The door looked paper-thin, like it was made of plywood. I bet one swift Krav Maga kick would demolish it.

  But I also noticed there were no scratches on the door, no obvious signs of damage. Funny. I walked over to the door to double-check. The frame was intact and the lock didn’t look like it was scratched or damaged.

  I looked at Rafe. “I don’t understand. There’s no sign of a forced entry. How did he get in?”

  Vera Mae flushed. “Well, there’s a tiny chance I may have left it open,” she admitted.

  “You left the door open? Vera Mae, for heaven’s sake. Please tell me you didn’t do that deliberately.” Vera Mae and I have had this argument many times before. She thinks that if a burglar is determined to get into your house he’ll find a way, and I’ve been telling her that she’s out of her mind. A robber will go for the easy score, the place with no lights, no security system, and no guard dog. Like her house.

  “Well?” I demanded. She really had left the door unlocked. A bubble of disbelief rose inside me.

  She didn’t answer me, but a red flush began creeping up her neck. She licked her lips and kept her eyes down, playing with her watch. A long beat passed. She was stalling.

  “Vera Mae, fess up. You did leave it open on purpose.” Rafe’s voice had an edge to it.

  “Well, honestly, it was just for a couple of hours.” She flashed an unrepentant grin. “And most folks in Cypress Grove leave their doors unlocked.” She was right. This was strictly small-town America, with a low crime rate, and people tended to be trusting.

  “And I left the back door open, too.”

  “What? Why in the world did you do that?” I challenged her.

  “I was expecting a delivery.” All three of us stared at her.

  “What kind of delivery?” Rafe leaned forward, his brows knitted in concentration.

  “Just some more papers for the time capsule celebration. Historical stuff, nothing valuable. Nothing worth stealing, that’s for sure.”

  A little bell went off somewhere in the back of my brain. “Wait a minute. Didn’t someone already give you a box of papers that belonged to Althea? You showed them to me at the station.”

  “Those were from Miss Whittier, Althea’s neighbor,” Vera Mae said. “This is a different set of papers. They belonged to Mildred Smoot.”

  “And someone gave them to you because—”

  “Because they wanted them to be kept safe, I guess. I doubt there’s anything interesting in there, just some more notes from the historical society. Maybe some newspaper clippings, that sort of thing.”

  “Why are the papers from the society spread around town like this?” Nick asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to keep them all in one place? Like the historical society?”

  “I suppose so,” Vera Mae said doubtfully, “but you know how these old dears are. They take home a box or two to go through them, and they forget to bring them back. Or they never get around to looking at them. I think that’s what happened with this batch. Mildred’s colleague, Gina Raeburn, found these in Mildred’s home. She figured there might be something interesting in there, so she dropped them off here tonight.”

  “You still have the papers?” I said eagerly. Maybe this explained the break-in; at least it was a good starting point.

  “Yes, but I’m sure there’s nothing valuable in there. Nobody would want them.”

  “Where are they?” Rafe stood up, looking around the room.

  “Oh, I’m sure they’re right inside the back door, in the laundry room. Gina said she was going to leave them on top of the washing machine.”

  Rafe and I exchanged a look. “Any particular reason she would do that?” he asked.

  “She has a bad back and bad knees. She can barely walk up those two front steps, especially carrying a box. So she said she’d probably just go in the back door and leave them there for me.” Vera Mae flushed. “So that’s why I left both doors open, front and back.”

  Chapter 23

  “Let’s take a look at the laundry room, and I’ll get Officer Brown to do another walk-through out back.” Rafe called out to the square-jawed officer standing on the front porch. “Duane! Check the backyard again for footprints, evidence, anything you can find.”

  Vera Mae led the way down a narrow hallway to a small room with a washer and dryer. She flipped on the light switch and gestured to an open cardboard box filled with clippings and papers. “There they are. Gina left them for me, just like she said.” She riffled through the top layer of yellowing papers and shook her head, her brows scrunched together.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing, I guess. But I just don’t get it. Nobody in his right mind would break in for a bunch of moldy old papers. He must have been after something else.” She wrapped her arms around her chest as if a chill had just passed through her.

  “Don’t worry about the papers, Vera Mae,” I said quickly. “You don’t have to bother with any of this right now.”

  “I’ll go through the box first thing tomorrow. I don’t feel like I’m up to much tonight. Feeling a bit peaked, you know?” She gave an embarrassed half laugh. “Silly, isn’t it? Don’t know what’s come over me.”

  “It’s not silly. You’ve had quite a shock,” I said quietly. “It’s going to take a little while to get over this. You need to take it easy for a day or two.”

  The shock of surprising an intruder in your own home is something that doesn’t go away overnight. Vera Mae seemed to be coping well, but I had the feeling she was probably operating on autopilot.

  Soon the reality of what happened would hit her, maybe over the next few days, or maybe the next few hours. She needed to be with someone who was supportive and who understood what had happened. Vera Mae had suffered a psychic wound, as the shrinks call it, and her safe world had disintegrated the moment she’d seen that burglar in the hoodie.

  �
��Maggie’s right. You need to take it easy for a while.” Rafe touched her arm and then pushed open the back screen door and stepped out into the balmy night. The yard was shrouded in shadow, and the cicadas were humming in the trees. Officer Brown was walking around the yard with a flashlight, shining it over the dwarf palms and the low shrubs that bordered the trim little backyard.

  “Nothing back here. No sign of footprints, no sign of forced entry.” Officer Brown shook his head, catching Rafe’s questioning glance. He moved toward the edge of the yard and suddenly the night air was peppered with furious barking. It sounded like a pack of wild dogs with one very loud alpha dog barking louder than the others. I flinched, expecting a group of Rottweilers to come tearing through the shrubbery at any second. Without meaning to, I took a quick step backward, stepping on Nick’s foot.

  “What in God’s name is that noise?” Rafe asked. “It’s coming from the back of your yard, Vera Mae. Do you have a dog chained out there?”

  Vera Mae shook her head. “Are you kidding? I’m more of a cat person. That noise you hear is coming from Lemuel Clemson’s house.” Her lips were twitching, and I could see she was holding back a laugh. “Our property borders each other’s. All we have is that low hedge dividing us.”

  “Tell me about him,” Rafe said.

  “He’s not a friendly sort of guy, kind of paranoid, if you know what I mean.” She lowered her voice. “Always suspicious, always complaining about something. He’s a busybody, if you ask me.”

  “A busybody might be just what we need right now,” Rafe muttered. “Maybe he saw something. Let’s try an experiment.” He called out to the officer patrolling the yard. “Duane, take a couple of steps backward. Toward us.”

  Officer Brown moved away from the shrubs, and the dog barking stopped abruptly. Like magic. Or like someone had thrown a switch. Funny. The sound still lingered in my brain, and I realized there was something odd about it. It was the kind of raucous barking that would make an intruder head for the hills, but it had a strange, tinny undertone to it.

  And then the two halves of my brain connected and I figured it out.

  “Vera Mae, there’s something strange about that dog barking. Could it be a recording? It doesn’t sound real to me.”

  Vera Mae laughed. “You’ve got a good ear, sugar. It is a recording. Lemuel sets it to a motion detector. He’s always afraid someone’s gonna break into his house. Although I can’t imagine what he’s got in there worth stealing.” She shrugged, her shoulders slumping for a moment. “Funny when you think about it. I’m the one who nearly got robbed, and he’s the one with all the fancy security equipment.”

  Fancy security equipment. I looked over at her neighbor’s house. Another small stucco ranch, probably from the same era as Vera Mae’s. Pastel stucco exterior, flat roof. And then I spotted lights on the back corners of his house, perched on the corners of the roof. Right next to the lights were rectangular gadgets that were aimed right at us.

  “Rafe,” I said, quietly, pointing to the gizmos on the roof. “Are those what I think they are?”

  He followed my gaze and grinned. “Bingo. Cameras.” He squeezed my arm. “Good work, Maggie.” He looked at Vera Mae. “Maybe your intruder was caught on tape.”

  “Really?” She scowled. “I don’t know if those things even work. I figured they were just for show. Like those security stickers people put on their front doors.”

  “We might be lucky.” He turned to Officer Brown. “Get Gina Raeburn’s phone number. I want to see if we can pin down what time she was here.” He looked at Vera Mae. “And I’m going to pay a call on your neighbor right now and see if those cameras were turned on tonight. Maybe we just got lucky.”

  “Maybe you could cite him for disturbing the peace. I’m really sick of hearing that recording night and day.”

  It was after ten o’clock when Rafe and his sidekick, the Opie lookalike, wrapped up their investigation and left. Rafe had the video surveillance tape from Lemuel Clemson’s camera and was going to look at it down at headquarters.

  Vera Mae felt uneasy staying in the house after the break-in, so after she grabbed Tweetie Bird’s cage and some extra bird food, I had Nick drive us both back to my place. Mom was down in Miami auditioning for yet another B movie, and I quickly set up the guest room for Vera Mae. Pugsley was ecstatic to see her and danced in circles around her ankles, hoping for a belly rub.

  I made a pot of tea, and the two of us sat at the kitchen table, going over the box of papers from Gina Raeburn.

  “Do you really think there’s anything in here worth stealing?” Vera Mae was wearing John Lennon-style reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Some of this stuff doesn’t even look old. She’s got some of Mildred’s mail in here, and look, here’s an electric bill and a pizza coupon.”

  “And there’s some personal correspondence,” I said, opening a piece of pale blue stationery that was tucked inside an envelope. I looked at the postmark. Georgia. “Do you think I should read it?”

  “What difference does it make now, sweetie? She’s gone.”

  I quickly scanned the letter, written in a precise script.

  “Anything interesting?” Vera Mae bent down and scooped Pugsley onto her lap.

  “Maybe. It sounds like Mildred wrote to this woman in Georgia, trying to get some information on the Paley family. She was hoping to get a list of the contents of the time capsule, as far as I can tell.”

  “Did she have any luck?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The person she wrote to suggested some other contacts she could try.” I put the letter down and sipped my tea. Clover honey. I warmed my hands on the cup and breathed in the sweet aroma. “Why was Mildred so interested in the Paleys? And the time capsule. Why would she write to someone in Georgia about it? I wonder what kind of lead she was tracking down.”

  “Maybe because she just liked to dig up facts. She was a librarian, after all.” Vera Mae said. “Doing research was part of her job, wasn’t it?”

  “I guess so. But this seems like this is going above and beyond, doesn’t it?” My mind kicked back to the conversation with Mark Sanderson, the condo developer. Wasn’t he from Georgia? Was there a connection here?

  “It does seem a little odd, now that you mention it.” Vera Mae shrugged. “Almost something obsessive about it. All this interest in the time capsule,” she mused. “It makes it seem like there’s something much bigger at stake.”

  “Do you suppose there’s going to be any big surprise when it’s finally opened?”

  “I sure hope so. We’ve been pushing it in those promos, and Cyrus is going to be disappointed if the ratings don’t show it.” She paused, tracing a pattern on the checkered cotton tablecloth. “It’s funny, but all this hullabaloo about the time capsule has sort of taken the focus off the murders, hasn’t it? It almost seems like they’ve been pushed to the back burner.”

  “I think I may have a lead,” I said softly. Vera Mae raised her eyebrows, and I filled her in on what I’d learned from Lucille Whittier about the painting in the hallway of the historical society.

  “It could be something important,” Vera Mae acknowledged. “What are you going to do about it? Do you think you should run it by Rafe? He has resources you don’t, honey. He has the whole Cypress Grove PD and the CSIs behind him.”

  Rafe. I hesitated, drumming my fingertips on the table. The thought had crossed my mind, but I wanted to follow through on this myself. “I think I want to talk to that picture framer first, Chris Hendricks. And then I may just call Candace Somerset and see if I can borrow a painting for a few days. The one that Althea had planned on getting reframed.”

  “A painting? What will you do with the painting?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But I think the painting is somehow involved in the murder. It goes to motive.” I shook my head. “I can’t be more specific than that.”

  Vera Mae stifled a yawn. “Then let’s hope someone can help you with it
,” she said sleepily. “I still think you should tell Rafe.” Vera Mae is a huge fan of Rafe’s and always takes his side if I have a problem with him. She’s a sucker for his bad-boy charm and acts like she’s taken a hit of scopolamine if I remind her of his many faults.

  I smiled. “I’ll tell him eventually, but only if my hunch is right. Only if things pan out the way I think they should.”

  “Because?” she asked, a teasing note in her voice.

  “Because if I’m wrong, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Either Chris Hendricks had something to hide, or he was just a short, twitchy guy with an unfortunate facial tic. I decided to hit his framing shop first thing in the morning. I’d dropped Vera Mae off at the station at nine o’clock and had swung into town, figuring I’d catch him alone, before any customers arrived. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. The place was deserted; the picture-framing business must be slow.

  “Chris Hendricks?” I asked. He stopped fiddling with a collection of wedding photos and stared at me through Coke-bottle lenses.

  “That’s me. Can I help you?” He wiped his hands on his pants.

  “I hope so. I’m Maggie Walsh.” I gave him my card. He peered at it and then gave me a puzzled stare. “From WYME? We run your radio commercials.” Actually, we weren’t running any current spots for him, but I remembered seeing his name on the traffic log a couple of months ago. Technically he was still a client.

  Suddenly his mood changed. “Maggie Walsh! I know you.” He came back from zombieland and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You’re the shrink lady with the call-in show.” Shrink lady? I managed a smile as he wiped his hands on his jeans once more and then folded his arms across his chest. “I listen to your show all the time.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it.”

  A beat passed. I raised an eyebrow and waited. Here it came. “You know, you’ve really got some wack jobs calling in. How do you stand it?” He chuckled but he looked uncomfortable. I noticed he had trouble making eye contact with me.