Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series)

by E. E. Kennedy

  “Um, Mrs. Dickensen, if that’s all right.”

  I looked at his face and was reassured. This was not a boy who could kill a man in cold blood.

  “Go right ahead, Dustin. If you have a problem or need help, come back down. I’m a little shaky with numbers, but I’ll be glad to do what I can.”

  “Don’t worry. I can handle math. It’s the history and English and stuff that gives me trouble.” He backed out the door and took the stairs two at a time.

  “Dork,” J.T. murmured after his brother. “He’s a real grouch lately.”

  “You’ve both been under a lot of stress.”

  “I guess so.” He filled in the last blank on his workbook page. “There, done. You wanna check it now?”

  “Sure.”

  I rapidly scanned the answers. There was only one wrong out of thirty.

  “This is good work, J.T., only obelisk isn’t a bird. It’s a kind of tower, like the McDonough Monument across from city hall. I’m surprised that you, of all people, didn’t know that, after all the things you’ve climbed.”

  He ducked his head and smiled shyly. “I guess I do now.”

  I smiled back. “That’s right, just about the only thing around here you haven’t climbed. Or have you?”

  “Non, c’est tout, Madame.”

  “Tres bien. How is the French coming?”

  “It’s not as hard as I thought.”

  “Bon!”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “I think I figured out why you’re so mean at school.”

  “You have?” I said, amused.

  “Sure. It’s easy. You’re a woman, right?”

  “True,” I agreed, wryly remembering how firmly that fact had been brought home to me in recent days.

  “And you’re not very big, either. I think you have to be kind of a bi—um, bad guy,” he corrected himself, “in school so us guys won’t lean on you too much.” He graced me with a wide smile. “What do you think?”

  “I think you need to get back to your work.”

  “Is, uh, Vern okay?” he asked, picking up his pencil again.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I feel bad about him gettin’ in trouble on account of us. I’m real sorry.”

  He stopped and looked over his shoulder. I knew what he was thinking. His father and brother were both upstairs and out of earshot.

  “I don’t know what happened with that thing. We sure didn’t tell the police.”

  “What didn’t you tell?” I was whispering along with him.

  He reddened. “Oh, gosh. I thought you knew—”

  “About the silver lunchbox? I do know. Is that what you didn’t tell?”

  “Yeah, mostly. I mean, Vern didn’t know and we didn’t know, either, that anybody was dead. We didn’t see any dead body. We just wanted to get that stupid thing back to the mad guy without, you know, without getting in trouble.”

  “J.T., when—” I began, but changed my question as Martin Rousseau walked into the kitchen. “That is, when do you think you can have your essay finished?”

  J.T. understood immediately. “I dunno. Pretty quick, I guess. I’ll get started as soon as I think up what to write about.”

  “You guys doing good here?” Martin asked.

  “J.T. is doing very well,” I said firmly. The kind of grammar usage I had heard in this house made it clear that there was a lot of work to do.

  Martin went to the refrigerator and looked in. “Gotta get some more food, I guess,” he mumbled.

  “The crowd outside seems to have subsided somewhat,” I remarked, more to make conversation than anything.

  Though the throng had dwindled to several reporters and a cameraman apparently camping by the curb in a single van, the strain was still making its mark. Martin looked worse than at my last visit. He had lost weight, and I wasn’t sure he had even changed his clothes since the other day.

  “Are you able to get to work more easily now?” I asked.

  He looked at me over the top of the refrigerator door and shook his head. “No, I took some vacation time. I got three weeks coming. The people at the plant are being real good about it. ’Course, I’m gonna have to get back sometime.”

  His gaze returned to the interior of the refrigerator. He pulled out a carton and shook it.

  “We’re outta milk.”

  I moved a blank piece of paper and a pencil into position. “Tell me what you need. I’ll pick up some things at the supermarket.”

  Martin protested, but weakly. After I assured him that I’d retain the receipt so he could reimburse me, he proceeded to enumerate some basics.

  “That meatball chunky soup, milk, a couple cans of chili, the store brand’s okay. A half-dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese, the blue kind, like on TV. That should do it.”

  Fresh fruit and vegetables hadn’t been mentioned, but I mentally resolved to add some bananas, apples, and carrots, and pay for them myself.

  With a can of root beer in his hand, Martin again retired upstairs, and I began to prepare to leave. J.T. stood when I did. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

  “Um. Miss—Mrs.—um, would you go one other place for me? For me and Dus? I got money I can give you.” He reached in his back pocket.

  “Go where, J.T.?”

  He stepped close to me and whispered, almost inaudibly, “The flower shop, you know, the one next to the supermarket?”

  “Blossoms by Nathan?” I said aloud.

  “Shh!” he admonished me sharply, and whispered, “It’s kind of a secret.” He fished in his pocket and extracted some crumpled bills and an assortment of change. “Here’s, um, sixteen, no, seventeen dollars and a little more. I need you to order a couple of corsages for the ice dance. But don’t say it’s for us, because they might not do it.”

  “But, J.T.,” I protested, whispering, “are you saying you’re actually going to the dance? It’s only a few days away.”

  He looked at me a long minute, then shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. It’s something to look forward to, y’know? I mean we didn’t do it, y’know? And we got this lawyer guy who’s supposed to be good. Maybe we’ll get to go.” He turned his gaze back to me. “You see what I mean?”

  I did see. The corsages represented a normal future. I couldn’t bring myself to squash any hope they might feel, no matter how tenuous.

  “But to whom are you giving the corsages?” My grammar was correct, I knew, but even to myself, I sounded stuffy.

  J.T. didn’t seem to notice. He slid his eyes over to the back door. “Well, you don’t have to have a date to go, y’know. We can go stag.” He rubbed the tip of his nose with the back of his wrist, a subtle sign he was prevaricating, and looked at me. “But we need the flowers just in case, sort of.”

  Just in case. Right, I thought. And the Gervais twins will just happen to show up. He and his brother were up to something, for sure, but it probably wasn’t criminal. At least, I didn’t think so.

  I thrust the money in my jacket pocket. “All right, J.T. I’ll order them in my name and have them delivered to Chez Prentice. If things go well for you, they’ll be available the night of the ice dance.” That’s all I needed; more secrets to keep.

  As I buttoned my coat, J.T. looked at me and sighed. “I thought it would be fun, but it’s not, you know?”

  “What’s not fun?”

  “Bein’ famous.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Seventeen bucks and change for two corsages?” Chuck Nathan of Blossoms by Nathan squinted down at me skeptically. “Including sales tax?”

  I nodded, prepared to add a few dollars of my own if necessary.

  His gray sweatshirt, bearing the words “Do Your Part—Recycle!” hung loosely on his gaunt form. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose and shrugged. “Well, I suppose I could do it for twenty, plus tax. They’ll be carnations, though. Most kids are ordering Gerberas this year,” he said, nodding to a huge sheaf of brightly colored daisies behind the glass door
of a nearby cooler and added, “Gerberas are extra.” His big, pale and watery blue eyes regarded me as balefully as Alec’s Megachasma pelagios.

  “I’m sure carnations will be fine,” I said, pulling the extra money out of my wallet. “In the school colors, please. And if you’ll deliver them to Chez Prentice the afternoon of the ice dance.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want.” He slapped an order pad on the counter and began writing.

  I took a deep breath. I loved the smell of a flower shop, a combination of sweet-scented blooms underscored by a kind of mossy tone. Lily liked to say that Nathan’s shop smelled like a funeral. I preferred to look at the other way around: Funerals always smelled like a flower shop.

  “School colors, no problem,” Chuck said, writing vigorously. “You ordering these for your guests over there at the hotel?”

  He was clearly fishing for information. His glasses slid down his nose again, and I noticed that they were broken just over the nose and repaired with green florist’s tape and that his 60’s vintage ponytail was fastened by florist’s wire. Chuck was our town’s genuine, unreconstructed hippie and clearly followed the instructions on his shirt.

  “For friends,” I countered evasively as I handed over the boys’ money.

  He deposited the money in the vintage NCR cash register and handed me a carbon-copy receipt. My order was impaled along with a dozen others on a long desk spike. “You want to make out a card to go with the corsages?” he asked, indicating the tall desk where there were a variety of tiny decorated cards for all occasions with tiny, blue-and-white striped envelopes to go with them.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  A short, white-haired woman stood on tiptoe at the desk, writing. I wasn’t sure, but from the back, she looked familiar.

  “Well met, Amelia!” said someone from behind me.

  I turned and beheld the amiable mass that was Professor Alexander Alexander.

  “Alec, likewise!”

  “My, ye look bonnie today!” He laid a large hand on my shoulder and scratched the side of his face with the other. “Let me have a look at ye. There’s something there. Can’t put my finger on it, but it’s like there’s a candle within.”

  I know I blushed, because I could feel the heat on my cheeks. “Oh, Alec, what a flatterer you are—”

  “No, no, it’s something.” He shook his large and shaggy head. “Never mind, my dear. Suffice it to say you’re looking especially lovely. Excuse me a moment—” He turned to Chuck Nathan. “I’ll need a nosegay for a lady. Make it small pink rosebuds with baby’s breath, surrounded by a kind of doily rigmarole, all in a vase, for delivery tomorrow.”

  He handed Chuck a credit card, glanced at me and caught my quizzical look. He looked away and mumbled into his beard, “Miss Lily’s birthday.”

  Chuck placed the credit card on an old-fashioned card imprinter, fixed a carbon-copy form on top and ran it across with a metallic rattle.

  “Oh, Alec.”

  I felt a variety of emotions: compassion for him and sadness at the futility of his cause, but most of all, alarm that I had totally forgotten the occasion myself. Lily and I usually exchanged birthday gifts. Would our estrangement mean an end to that pleasant custom? I decided not.

  “Chuck? Do you deliver gifts too?” I asked, gesturing at the shelf of dusty china knickknacks.

  He glanced up from his order pad and took a swig from a nearby can of cola. “Yeah, no problem.”

  I selected a pretty gilt-edged teacup and saucer painted with pink rosebuds, dusting it discreetly with a tissue from my pocket. It was outrageously overpriced, but charming, and Lily would love it.

  When Alec finished giving instructions and retired to the nearby desk to make out a card, I stepped up and arranged for the cup to be gift-wrapped and sent to Lily’s address too.

  The woman at the desk finished her writing, quickly slid the card into a tiny envelope, and sealed it. As she licked the envelope, she turned, our eyes met, and I recognized Mrs. Daye.

  “Hello!” I said, surprised.

  “Uh, hi.” Looking vaguely startled, she walked over to Chuck and handed him the envelope. “There.”

  “So you’re sure you want just the one, now?” Chuck asked her, scratching the top of his head with a pencil. “It’s cheaper per flower if you get half a dozen, no problem.”

  “No thank you,” she said, glancing at me. “Just the one.” Without another word, she turned and walked out.

  “Get her.” Chuck turned away mumbled, “I was just making sure. Gotta get the orders right. Especially odd ones like that.”

  I wanted to ask him which was odd, the woman or the order but decided that a person’s flower order was probably confidential, a kind of florist-client privilege.

  Besides, it was apparently time for Chuck’s break. Without further pleasantry, he turned away from us, pulled a metallic lunchbox from beneath the counter, and retrieved a large bag of potato chips. These he began munching cheerfully, alternating chips with sips of cola, ignoring any rules of etiquette.

  My stomach growled a little. It would have been nice if he had offered me some chips. I would have declined, of course, but it would have been nice nonetheless.

  I filled out the card for Lily simply: “Happy Birthday from Amelia.” There seemed nothing else to say under the circumstances.

  “May I give you a lift somewhere?” Alec asked.

  His manners were always impeccable. It was one of the many things I liked about him.

  I declined with thanks. “I’m headed to the newspaper office. It’s not far.”

  “I understand some students of yours are in a good deal of trouble,” Alec commented, holding the door open for me as we exited.

  I sighed. “Yes, but I just don’t believe they could do such a thing, kill a man in cold blood, like that. Accidentally, perhaps, but never on purpose.”

  “I feel a certain responsibility for their predicament,” Alec said as we reached his car and he turned the key.

  “Responsibility? What do you mean?”

  He ran a big hand over his face and looked down at me. “I’m a witness, Amelia, for the prosecution. I was driving along the lake shore and saw the fellows—or at least their car—nearly run another car off the road on the day in question. They were driving in a very dangerous manner. That giant grape-on-wheels of theirs is pretty easy to spot. I felt it my duty to step forward and give the information to the police. ”

  “Then when they go to trial, you’ll be, um . . . ” I paused.

  He sighed. “Called to the stand? Yes, I believe I will. I feel terrible about it, but what can I do?”

  We both stared at the ground for a moment, silent. It was then the inspiration hit me.

  “Alec?” I said at last. “I need to solve this mystery. How would you feel about being a sidekick?”

  Slowly, he lifted his eyes to mine. As he did, his back seemed to straighten. He gave his beard a stroke and burst into a beaming smile.

  “I’d love it. When do we start?”

  Blossoms by Nathan was the next to last shop in a row of tiny stores on Brinkerhoff Street, between the Raisin D’être Bakery and True Wines (slogan: In Vino Veritas) and only a few doors away from the newspaper office.

  Alec and I adjourned to a corner table at the bakery where he had coffee and I had milk. We shared a Danish, and I filled Alec in on the basics of the situation. He was eager to start immediately.

  “One thing, though,” he said, “aware as I am of your aversion to modern technology, I still must insist you carry a cell phone.” He cut short my objections. “I’ll get you one, sign you up, everything, but I will brook no argument on this, Amelia.”

  I sighed. “Well, Gil has been wanting me to get one.”

  “It’s agreed, then. Come along,” he ordered, gathering up our foam cups and paper napkins.

  “I have a number of avenues I’d like to explore,” Alec said as we said goodbye on the front steps of the newspaper offi
ce. We agreed to meet again soon and share what we had found out, and he ambled away, humming “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

  “It sure doesn’t look good for them,” I heard Gil saying on the telephone as I entered his office.

  “What doesn’t look good?” I asked as he hung up.

  He swiveled in his chair and grinned at me. “Hello, sweetheart! How long have you been standing there?”

  “Don’t try to deflect my question. Were you talking about Vern or the Rousseau boys?” I leaned down to kiss him.

  “I could have been speaking of many things,” he said, pulling up a chair for me. “Terrorists, the immigration problem, smuggling, politics in general. But you’re right. My source in the police department tells me that the case against the Rousseau boys is—and I quote—‘a sure thing.’ Vern’s situation is a little less grave, according to the lawyer I called. I got him an appointment for this afternoon.”

  I frowned and sat down. “What do they have on the Rousseaus?”

  “My police source couldn’t tell me much, but—” Gil leaned across his desk, retrieved a steno pad and read from his notes, “—the police know that the Dustin and J.T. had the shattered window in their VW repaired.”

  “That isn’t necessarily incriminating,” I said.

  “True, but the boys claim that they were shot at.”

  So they had told the police that, at least. “Doesn’t the repair substantiate their claim?”

  Gil nodded. “It would, only a neighbor saw one of the boys smashing the back window. It looks a lot like they were trying to fake evidence. Remember, no bullet was found in the car. And no gun at the scene of the crime.”

  We both sighed.

  I raised a shaking hand to my mouth. “Gil,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “I could use a cola—no, make it a bottled water; would you, please?” The pamphlet Dr. Stout had given me said to be careful of caffeine.

  He leaned in, his face filled with concern. “Are you still having trouble with your stomach? I thought you’d seen the doctor about that.”

  My response was muffled. “I did.”

  He thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out some change. “But you seemed so much better. Didn’t he give you some medicine or something? I’ll be right back.” He headed down the hall to the soft drink machine.