Leslie made the requisite call to the Manchester Police Department, and they arrived in due course. I was glad to see our Officer Kingsley among those milling around the tiny yard, stringing up the yellow crime tape and taking pictures. I guess it always amazes me just how many folks it takes to investigate a crime. I’d always thought it was just like you saw in the movies, all the bit-parters; the kind that Miss Bea loved to hire.
Anyhow, I debated whether or not to hang about to see Lily’s body being carried out and hauled off. I wanted to see her for myself. I’m not even sure why, but I did. Leslie and Derek had already given their statements to the officer and I had been told to wait for someone to talk to me.
Being the enterprising young woman that I am, I decided to speed things up a bit; to find an investigator to talk to and discover the particulars of the murder. I strolled around the back of the house, ducking under the yellow barrier, and caught a glimpse of Officer Kingsley standing just outside the back door. I raised my hand in a slight wave, hoping to catch her eye without making a big fuss.
I was in luck. Officer Kingsley saw me and snapped closed the cellphone she had been talking on, waving at me to join her. I did, walking across the backyard with its worn-out grass and empty flowerpots. The back door stood ajar, the room bustling with activity. I craned my neck to see around Officer K, but she quickly put an arm across the doorway.
‘You don’t need to see, Jo,’ she admonished me. ‘It’s not a pretty sight.’
I looked up at her, eyebrows raised in question. ‘Is it really that bad?’
Officer Kingsley nodded her head somberly. ‘It is. Take my word for it, OK?’
I said that I would, but I made a note to talk to Leslie and Derek. It was share and share alike, as far as I was concerned.
Officer K took down a few statements from me. I told her how we got the address, told her that we decided to check it out ourselves, and that Leslie had driven us over.
‘That’s about it,’ I added. ‘I got out and pounded on the door a couple of times, then Derek and I started looking through windows. When he came to the last one, Derek spotted Lily. Then Leslie peeped in after and confirmed it. We called you. That’s it.’
Officer Kingsley closed her notebook, reminding me not to talk about anything to do with the crime, and to give her a call if anything else came to mind. I agreed then walked back to the station wagon.
Leslie and LJ were in the back seat, his massive arm curled around her shoulders. She did not look good, I thought worriedly, wondering just how bad Lily had looked. Derek, seeming somewhat on his way to recovery, had slipped in to the front passenger seat. I rolled my eyes. That meant only one thing; I had to drive.
Well, I’ve never been one to shirk my duty, even if it included piloting a yacht-sized station wagon, replete with faux wood paneling and three passengers in various stages of quiet. I took the keys from Leslie, inserted them into the ignition, and turned. The engine roared into life and we were off, the ancient steering wheel held tightly in my grasp.
I debated starting a conversation with Derek, but a sideways glance told me he was still in no frame of mind for talk of any sort, so I refrained. I reached for the radio’s controls, and Miss Bea’s choice in music came blasting through the speakers. It had amused me when I found out her penchant for classic rock, but I figured that now was not the time to be critical. Any noise was better than no noise.
Unless it was Queen’s “Death on Two Legs”. We did not need any reminder of death and mayhem, so I quickly clicked the radio off.
OK, I thought grimly. This was too much. Sure, Derek and Leslie might have seen something terrible through that window, but didn’t they have the responsibility to share? I decided to take the bull by the horns and cleared my throat.
‘Derek. Leslie. I don’t want to upset you, but I really, truly want to know what you saw in that house.’ I caught Leslie’s eye in the rearview mirror, and almost took my words back.
Almost. I develop an insatiable curiosity when anyone doesn’t want to share with me. I soldiered on.
‘Derek. You first. Where was Lily at when you saw her?’ I figured a direct question would prod him into speech.
He cut his eyes at me, then turned back to look out of the window. ‘Why do you want to know so badly?’ He turned back to look at me. My eyes were fixed on the curving road ahead of us, but I could feel his stare.
‘I just do, that’s why,’ I retorted. ‘Besides, aren’t we part of a team here? You know what they say: “There’s no ‘I’ in team”.’ That should get the point across, I thought smugly, as I navigated the road.
‘Maybe not, but there is a “me” and this “me” doesn’t feel much like talking, OK?’
Humph, I thought. Well, I’d worm it out of him one way or another. Tucking that into the back of my mind, I guided the lumbering station wagon through the opened gates of the KOA.
I dropped the boys off at their trailer then drove to ours. A glance in the rearview mirror showed LJ leading Derek up to the door with one beefy hand on Derek’s slight shoulder. That made me feel a bit better. LJ and I would probably be playing nursemaid this evening, but that was OK. Leslie and Derek would do as much for us.
Miss Bea and Miss Lucinda should be awake by now, I thought. I wanted to get some food into Leslie, maybe get her to cough it up – what she had seen, I mean, not the food. The front door was locked but I had a key. Opening the door, I let us in, calling out, ‘Miss Lucinda? Miss Bea? We’re back!’
A faint snoring came down the hallway, and I grinned. The old dears were sawing logs. Well, a few more minutes in bed probably wouldn’t hurt. I’d take care of Leslie then wake them up. I led her into the kitchen, not even thinking about Lily at the moment.
Leslie was, though. She stopped cold in the doorway, not wanting to walk in. I had already opened the refrigerator and taken out the carton of milk and a piece of leftover cheesecake, intending to feed her.
She didn’t answer. Her eyes, fixed on the small kitchen table, were filled with tears.
‘Leslie? What’s wrong?’ I hurriedly set the milk and dessert down on the counter, putting an arm around her shoulders.
‘It was so awful,’ she sobbed. ‘You can’t even begin to imagine.’ I let her cry for a few minutes.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked gently. Yes, you do, I silently encouraged her. This was my chance to find out just what had shaken Derek and her so much.
She stayed silent, focused on some point in time that only she could see. I was beginning to think she had gone catatonic on me, then she spoke.
‘She must have made someone really, really angry,’ Leslie said softly, still fixed on some distant point.
I waited for more, but that was it. Sometimes you just have to use a cattle prod, I thought, and this was one of those times.
‘Leslie? Did they do something else to her, besides kill her?’ Oh, boy. What could be worse than being killed? Jo, you are a brilliant conversationalist at times, I scolded myself.
‘Yes.’ Her answer surprised me. I suppose I expected her to give me a dirty look, not a response.
‘What do you mean? Exactly?’ I prompted her.
She looked me full in the face then, her eyes widening at the horror of what she had seen. What Leslie had seen?
‘Jo, they – they cut out her tongue!’ With that, she slumped back, tears filling her eyes.
I stared at her, not sure if what I thought I’d heard and what she had said where a match. ‘Her tongue, as in what’s in your mouth? That tongue?’
In spite of the idiocy of the question, Leslie nodded. Her face and neck were wet with crying, and I reached out to hug her close. No wonder the poor girl had gone semicomatose.
‘That wasn’t all, either,’ she continued, her voice muffled against my shoulder. I stiffened. What else had they done to that poor girl?
‘She was sitting at her table just like she was eating dinner, only …’ Leslie got quieter. ‘It wa
sn’t food that was on her plate.’
I closed my eyes, trying not to picture what she had told me. Too late; the image was firmly fixed in my mind. I could see Lily, her pretty face demoralized with the damage to her mouth, the plate of – well, I wasn’t going there. Not now.
Not sure of what to say next, I gave her a final squeeze and backed away from her. ‘Look, Leslie. I want you to sit down. I’ll make you some hot tea and then I’m going to wake Miss Bea and Miss Lucinda. I think they should be in on this as well.’
Chapter Twenty
I’ve been trying to place the look on the Becklaw women’s faces when they got the full gist of Leslie’s story. Looking back, I can recall a mixture of repugnance and fear, but something else was there as well. The closest I can get to it is the way people act when they see a bad car accident: they don’t want to look, but they can’t help it. The Becklaw gals were certainly in that category.
Once I had assured them that yes, Derek was being cared for by LJ, and that no, I hadn’t seen it, only Leslie, Miss Bea went into mother mode, murmuring over Leslie as if she had been the victim and not Lily. Miss Lucinda, the more pragmatic of the two, stomped into the kitchen and began banging pots and pans around, or at least that’s what it sounded like. Her mantra said that food was the best cure for shock, and with a shock as great as Leslie’s, we were going to be feasting tonight.
The thought of sitting down at the table, however, turned my stomach. It would probably be better if we ate in the tiny living room on trays, especially since the only table we had to use was a kitchen table. I shuddered. There was no telling how long I would have to avoid eating in a kitchen.
I ventured in, ready to duck a flying pan or two. Leslie was being cared for, Miss Bea was occupied, and that left me to my own devices. I figured that playing sous-chef to Miss Lucinda was much better than reliving the day over and over in the solitude of my room.
Miss Lucinda was bent over the cutting board, wielding a paring knife and slicing a yellow onion as if she had the killer in her sights.
Without looking up at me, she said ‘Get me the chicken from the refrigerator. I thawed it out last night, and it’s a good thing I did. We need some comfort food around here and I’m going to make Bolstering Chicken Stew.’ She continued to chop and dice the heck out of that onion.
‘Oh, and grab the carrots from the veggie rack. You’ll need to slice those up fairly thin, along with a couple celery stalks.’
Those tasks kept us busy, working in silence, a heady mélange of aromas filling the air. The chicken was set to boil in a pot of water and broth mixture, and the chopped veggies followed. Miss Lucinda then added several cans of drained white beans and a can of diced tomatoes, judicious amounts of pepper and garlic salt, covering the whole thing with a tight lid. She nodded in satisfaction.
‘We’ll let that come to a boil, then cut the fire down just a hair to let it simmer for about half an hour. In the meantime, see if you can rustle up some bread or rolls.’
I do enjoy baking and cooking, and I just happened to have memorized my favorite recipe for home-made bread called Easy-Peasy Bread. By the time the stew had simmered and the bread had baked, the entire trailer smelled heavenly. I completely understood why food could be so comforting.
Carrying filled bowls and slices of bread out to the living room, the four of us concentrated on eating and relaxing. I noticed that Leslie looked much calmer than she had an hour before; Miss Bea’s motherly ministrations had obviously done the trick. I idly wondered how Derek and LJ were getting along, and it was as if my thoughts had pulled them down our way. Within a minute or two, they stood on the trailer’s small porch, knocking on the door.
Installed in the living room with stew and bread, the two boys ate rapidly and silently. It has always seemed to me that boys of any age can become hungry on demand, and these two were certainly proving my theory. Between the six of us, we decimated the Bolstering Chicken Stew and the Easy-Peasy Bread, empty bowls set aside on the floor near our respective feet. It was time to talk.
LJ had managed to insinuate his bulk onto the couch between Miss Bea and Leslie, and the three of them looked as tightly fitted together as a dovetailed drawer. Derek sat on the floor, leaning back against the wall, Miss Lucinda was in the chair nearest the kitchen, and I sat in the matching one placed by the door. Anyone who walked by and casually peeked inside would have thought that we were a family relaxing together after dinner, nothing more on our minds than what to do the next day.
How wrong they would have been.
Somehow – probably due to the calming influence of the chicken stew – we managed to talk it out, creating a probable timeline for Lily’s movements between the aborted performance and the finding of her body. As far as we knew, Andy and Skinny Joe were now both bereaved family members as well as suspects, and Julian had fallen off the cops’ collective radar. That seemed to make the most sense, at least to me. By putting together earlier statements of Joe’s odd behavior at the first crime scene, and the fact that Lily’s relationship to him had not been divulged (although Andy’s had), I was beginning to think that something along the lines of a family feud was at the bottom of this. Family issues were notorious for wreaking havoc and even murder.
That didn’t explain Josie, though, I had to admit. It could be that the two murders were not related at all, and that it had been a random crime. But then I would go back to Skinny Joe’s behavior, and the entire thing would look connected again. What a mess! I had no idea how detectives were able to make sense of anything as crazy as these two crimes. My hope was that someone would be able to unravel this entire fiasco, and soon.
Our reservations ran out the day after tomorrow.
Over dishes of coffee ice cream, we hashed out a plan. I voted for staying on a few more days – just to see the thing through, I explained. I was also hoping to do a bit more detecting, although without today’s grim result. Leslie and Derek seconded the motion, and Miss Bea, looking doubtful, listened to our reasoning.
To my complete surprise, Miss Lucinda offered to foot the bill for another week’s lodging at the KOA. Miss Bea promptly snapped up the offer, and a re-energized Leslie and LJ were sent to see the McLaughlins about extending our stay. The worst case scenario, I thought, was a transfer back to the YMCA, which wouldn’t be so bad either. And much, much closer to that yummy restaurant.
While the twosome went about their errand, I suggested to Miss Bea that we make a call to Officer Kingsley sometime that evening. I wanted to know if there was anything else on Julian, even though he was more than likely off the suspect list. There was still a niggling in the back of my mind that I couldn’t shake, and it was somehow connected with him.
Derek protested, saying that more than likely the officer would be working on the two murders, looking for linkage there. I agreed, but still pushed the idea of making that call. Miss Bea’s firm voice, though, made the decision for me.
‘We need to let today’s incident find a place in our minds first, dear Jo, before we add to the burden, don’t you think? And besides, if we sleep on what we already know, something may come to us in the morning.’ She smiled kindly at me, much as a teacher would at an eager student forging ahead without a logical plan.
So, once the reservations had been renewed – the McLaughlins were delighted to keep us, as most of this week’s visitors would be leaving next day – we settled in for the evening, each one in his or her own room, or, in the case of the Becklaw women, to their shared abode.
I had packed a book, thinking that I would have some time to read on the road. It is the best way, I have found, to get relaxed and drowsy, especially when sleeping in a strange bed. Unfortunately, my choice may not have been the most logical in this situation; it was thrilling, suspenseful, and laced with a murder or two. I tried to read, I really did. Finally, though, I had to give up. My mind was playing tricks on me, substituting names and descriptions until I couldn’t tell if I was reading about a fictitious
crime or the ones in which I had become involved.
I had taken my cellphone out in case my mother tried to ring. She seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to calling me; it was generally at the most inopportune moments when I couldn’t talk, and she would accuse me of not having time for her. Setting my book aside, I picked up the phone, toying with the idea of calling Officer Kingsley. I know that I had agreed to leave it until the morning, but …
I’m not known for my impulse-control abilities. I got up and re-dressed in the clothes I had taken off and tossed on the chair near my bed, reaching for the shoes I had kicked out of the way. I hadn’t planned on going out again, but some instinct pushed me to be ready for anything. Digging into my jeans pocket, I found the card that Officer K had given me. It only took a brief second to make up my mind. I dialed.
The recorded music on the other end of the line brought a wry smile to my lips: Officer Kingsley’s choice was the bouncy anthem of the 1980s and Bobby McFerrin’s cheery voice encouraged me to ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ I shook my head. Not worrying was the farthest thing from my mind at the moment.
‘Kingsley here.’ The firm voice of the detective sounded in my ear. I paused, forgetting why I had called. ‘Hello? This is Officer Kingsley. Can I help you?’ This time my mind kicked into gear.
‘This is Jo, Jo Anderson. I’m part of Becklaw’s.’ I waited to see if she remembered me.
‘Yes, of course. Is everything OK?’ Her concern sounded genuine, encouraging me to talk.
‘Well, yes and no. We were still a little shook up over what we found, er … over finding Lily today, but I think we’ll survive. I was just thinking,’ I went on, ‘about Julian Sweet. Is he – I mean, do you still consider him to be involved? You know, as a suspect?’ I held my breath, waiting for the officer to tell me to take a hike, to mind my own business.
The silence on the other end was palpable. I could feel her hesitation, and I mentally willed her to spill the beans. My telepathy skills must have gotten stronger.
Becklaw's Murder Mystery Tour (Jo Anderson Series) Page 13