“I would have killed her if she had been messing around with my husband and my bank account.” Augusta nodded to herself. “I still can’t believe Harold had it in him, stepping out on Bernadette.”
“I’m going to see Ray. I hate to admit it, but since I can’t get hold of Hugh, I may need Ray’s help.” I reached for my coat and scarf.
“Do you want me to drive you?” Augusta put down her wine glass, half of it still untasted.
“I think I’d better walk. Ray loves pulling people over for drunk driving tests, and I’m sure he would love to strip search you.” Augusta got a thoughtful look on her face as if she was weighing her options. Ray must not have measured up, because she sat back down at the table and took another sip of her wine.
“I think I’ll give Gene a call and see what he’s up to this evening. I don’t think he had plans.”
“I’m glad. I’d hate to think of you waiting up for me with nothing to do. You should enjoy yourself while you’re here.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I may not sell Beulah’s house after all.” Augusta beamed at me.
“Why not? You have a life of your own a long way from here.” I was stunned. Daily life hadn’t included Augusta in thirty years. I wasn’t sure we could survive living so close to each other.
“Beulah’s death has given me a lot to think about. I’ve always had somewhere to live, but Winslow Falls is my home. I have the opportunity to live here again. It feels like it was destined to happen.”
“You think Beulah was destined to be hit over the head?”
“That’s not what I meant. It just feels right to be back home. Besides, you could use someone keeping an eye on you.”
“Everyone in the village has their eye on me at all times. Call the police station if you hear from Hugh. Don’t bother to wait up or stay home if Gene is free.” I shrugged on my jacket and headed out on my cumbersome crutches. Just as soon as I could, I was going to get off the darn things.
I dragged my way along the icy sidewalk and noticed how empty the streets were. Usually in late afternoon there would be people coming and going on their way to Dinah’s or the post office but not on Christmas. Even Dinah needed to kick back with a glass of eggnog and find out if she had been naughty or nice once a year.
The sun still shone, but it was sinking fast. A stiff wind clawed its way into the down of my parka, the wool of my hat and right on through my sweater and turtleneck shirt. Even my foot wrapped up six layers deep in ace bandage and topped off with two wool socks was feeling like I might need to amputate some toes. I was glad when the police station came into sight. Looking through the plate glass window, I watched Ray deal out cards to Clive and Ernesto. They all glanced up when I came through the door, but the only one who looked happy was Ernesto.
“Where’s your suit, Santa?” Clive grimaced over his cards.
“Ray, could you deputize Clive and leave him in charge of Ernesto while you go to the Davis’s house with me?” I peeked over Ernesto’s shoulder at his cards. He had a sweet hand. If I didn’t have to hurry, I’d love to see the looks on Ray’s and Clive’s faces when he laid them down.
“I can’t believe you’d consider going back there after what you did to their Baby Jesus.” Ray looked genuinely distressed. He may not have kids of his own, but he sure did love Baby Jesus—not enough to go to church on a regular basis but enough to be traumatized by a crushed Christ Child. Every year he sets up a crèche in the median triangle at the center of the village. If it snows he goes out and brushes off the Baby Jesus with a car scraper. Getting him to go with me was going to require a little commandment breaking.
“I felt so bad, I went right out and bought them a replacement. I didn’t think they’d let me in after what happened with the front yard.” I knew God would understand. In my book, God is all about the big picture.
“All right. Clive, you’re in charge. Don’t let this guy out of your sight. I’ll be back as soon as Gwen’s made her apologies.” Ray patted his holster and grabbed a jacket. “Don’t eat all the beef jerky while I’m gone.” Ray pulled a heavy ring of keys from his jacket pocket.
“Are you leaving me a gun?” Clive didn’t take his eyes off the small dark man seated across from him. Ernesto squirmed in his seat at the word gun. I asked myself if his English was better than he let on.
“We’ve been over this before, Clive. What we have here is more of an understanding between friends than anything official. I can’t let you have an actual police weapon. Besides, you could take him without any trouble,” Ray said.
Clive nodded and shooed Ray towards the door with a wave of his cards. Icy air filled my lungs as we left the warmth of the police station. We’d be halfway to Chris’s house before the heater would kick in sufficiently to feel any difference in the temperature of the car.
“Hey, where’s the baby?”
“There is no baby. I needed you to go with me to the Davis’ house and I didn’t want to tell you why in front of the suspect.” That would get him. Ray never could resist official jargon.
“Are you going back for more questioning?” Ray punched down on the gas.
“I think we’re past questioning. You may have to arrest Chris based on what I heard from Harold today.” I explained the details of my visit to Harold. Once he got used to the idea that Ethel could ever have been a temptress, his eyes bulged so far forward he could have scraped the inside of the windshield with his lashes.
We pulled onto the county road and were only a half a mile from Chris’s house when we saw a car coming toward us in the opposite lane. Squinting through the dusk, I could make out Chris’s face through the windshield.
“Turn around. That was Chris. Ray, turn around.” I reached out and shook his arm. Ray flipped on the lights and siren and wheeled the car around. Chris gathered speed by the turn leading toward the river. Water that had run off from houses and snow banks during the day had frozen as the temperature dipped with the sun.
“I wish he’d slow down. I can’t feel the road.”
“I guess you can get him for speeding if nothing else will stick.” Not that I thought nothing else would stick. Harold’s accusations made too much sense out of the situation.
Ray slowed down as much as he was able while still keeping Chris’s SUV in view. Chris kept pushing the limits of the town’s salting and sanding job. Taking the curve like a drunken teenager, he slid off the road. Ray stopped where Chris had gone over the edge. Chris’s vehicle had crashed down through the pucker brush edging the river and lodged in the snow. He tried to push the truck door open. The snow came most of the way up the side of the door and kept it from opening up enough to allow a grown man to exit, even one as slippery as Chris.
I stayed in the car and watched Ray as he dug Chris out with a shovel he always kept in the trunk of the cruiser. He was about halfway through the job when Hugh rolled toward us in his Bel Air. I lurched out of the cruiser and waved at him. Hugh unfolded himself from the car and joined me at the side of the road. I noticed the sweater I’d lent him peeking out from underneath his jacket, but his hands were still bare.
“You’ve missed a lot today.” I pointed to Ray and then filled Hugh in on Harold’s sickbed confession.
“That explains why Harold was reluctant to call us in when the fires were getting out of control. Do you think Chris killed both women?” Hugh asked.
“I don’t know. I know he’s been accused of very anti-social behavior, and I know he sped up on the way out of town as soon as he saw Ray and me.”
“Maybe it’s you. I think something about you drives men over the edge into ditches.” Hugh’s mustache twitched above a big smile. “Do you think I ought to give Ray a hand?”
“No. I’m enjoying watching Ray do some real work for a change.” We stood watching him hoist shovelfuls of wet, heavy snow. Once all the snow had been cleared, Ray pulled his gun from his belt and popped open the door. Chris looked annoyed and defiant, Ray elated, as they scramb
led back up the hill.
Ray ushered his fugitive into the cruiser, a giant grin on his face. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other like a child needing the bathroom. “Winslow Falls is turning into a hotbed of criminal activity.”
“Are you taking Chris back to the station?” Hugh asked.
“I am. I’ve got to get back and make sure Clive’s doing okay with the other prisoner. My guess is they were in this together.”
“You may be right. I’ll give Gwen a ride back to the station.” Hugh waved him off and then opened his car door while I slid across the yellow and gray upholstered seat. Hugh hadn’t joined me. He was back down at the foot of the hill stomping down the snow to free the tailgate on the SUV. I saw him pawing around in the back. He came trudging back up the hill with a stack of three boxes in his arms.
Opening the trunk, he stowed them in back.
“What’s in them?” I asked as he slid behind the wheel and turned the car around.
“Remember the items missing from Beulah’s?”
“Yes.”
“I think I found them.”
Twenty-Six
Hugh drove straight past the police station and stopped in my driveway. I noticed someone had sprinkled salt and sand on the front steps. I wondered if it had been Diego and whether or not he and his family had enjoyed Christmas just a little even though Ernesto had been arrested.
“Shouldn’t we get right to the police station?” I was ready to jump all over Chris about the fires and the blackmail.
“I thought we’d give the boxes a good going over at your house before we join them,” Hugh said. “I wasn’t impressed by Chris and can’t think of anyone I’d like Ray to spend an hour grilling more than him. Besides, it’s Christmas. Let Ray enjoy himself.”
“I would like to see what’s in the boxes before we question Chris. Besides, you look like you could use a cup of coffee.” I filled the coffee pot while Hugh spread the boxes out on the kitchen table.
“I’m no expert, but is it strictly legal to have removed those from Chris’s car without some kind of documentation?” I asked. “A warrant? Something?”
“If these are what we think they are, there’s more of a risk that he’ll say he never had them than complain that we took them.” Hugh pulled off his jacket and draped it over the back of the rocker. “I’ve been meaning to return this sweater to you. I feel guilty about wearing it over and over.” He ran his hand over a sleeve, tracing the pattern of the cables with his fingertips.
“I’m glad somebody’s wearing it. Josh wore it once to please me, but it never fit him properly. It looks like I made it for you.” I pulled a couple of mugs down from the cupboard and then dug in the fridge for cream.
“You made it?” Hugh examined the Saxon Braid and honeycomb patterns winding their way across his chest.
“Yes, about three years ago.” I was surprised to find I felt shy. I’m proud of my knitting, and it brings me a lot of pleasure, but I don’t think of it as awe inspiring.
“How long did it take you?” Hugh reached out for the coffee cup I was handing him and shook his head at the cream and sugar.
“Too long to guess. Keep it. I love to knit, but it takes some of the pleasure away seeing my work hanging around with no one wearing it.”
“Knowing how long it took, I should give it back to you, but I really like it … so if you insist.”
“I do. Let’s look in the boxes.” Hugh nodded and opened the flap on one of them.
“Does this look familiar?” Hugh held up a copy of Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures.
“It looks like one of the books missing from Beulah’s.” I limped closer to get a better look. “That whole box looks like one of the missing ones from Beulah’s attic.” Just then, I heard footsteps running along the upstairs hall. Then the bathroom door closed. A man’s voice called out, and I heard stomping on the stairs. Gene swaggered into the kitchen wearing the green bathrobe Augusta had unwrapped from our mother earlier that morning.
“Gwen! I was unaware you would be home.” Gene blushed to the roots of his hair, which covered a lot of territory, considering how many of his follicles had abandoned their posts.
“Is Augusta home, or are you just here visiting her bathrobe?”
“Is there some kind of sleepwear mania in this town I ought to know about before I contract it?” Hugh asked.
“I think it only affects people who actually live here,” I said as Augusta came through the kitchen door wearing street clothes.
“If I had known you’d be home so early, I would have made dinner. Have you eaten?” Augusta didn’t look one bit embarrassed.
“We’re fine. Look what Hugh found in the back of Chris’s SUV.” I pointed to the boxes on the table.
“Is this stuff from Beulah’s?” Augusta asked.
“I think it is. Here are some of those paper shapes, and this has got to be that scrapbook.” I lifted the velvet-covered book chronicling the life of Eustace Freemont Hartwell.
“How did Chris get this stuff? Beulah was dead before we found it in her attic.” Augusta reached out to take the book from me and laid it on the table.
“Maybe Chris was the person Ernesto heard at Beulah’s when he was hiding out in the laundry room. He could have let himself in and helped himself to whatever he wanted.” Tissue paper rustled as Augusta dipped her hand into another box. “There’s not much else in here.”
“I thought there was something else when we looked in it before. Let me see.” I removed crumpled newspaper and peered deeper into the box. In the bottom was a faded blue star and a yellowed, spotted crescent moon. I held them up to show Hugh and Gene. “Why would anyone keep these?”
“Maybe they were party decorations,” Hugh said. Gene looked interested for a second, then shrugged.
I tipped the box upside-down and gave it a shake. A small piece of paper fluttered to the floor.
“What’s that?” Hugh asked.
“It’s a stamp. A one-cent stamp with Washington on it.” I dropped it into Hugh’s palm.
“Weren’t there letters in this box when we saw it at Beulah’s?” Augusta asked.
“That’s what’s missing, a bundle of them all tied together. Maybe this stamp fell off one of the envelopes. I bet Chris thought it was worth something.” Working in the post office, I’ve seen a lot of rate hikes on stamps. I may know a lot more about canceling stamps than I do collecting them, but I was certain this one hadn’t been mailed in my lifetime.
“Allow me.” Gene took the tiny paper from Hugh and peered at it closely. “I cannot claim to be an expert on stamps, but I do know that it’s worth less if it’s been cancelled or if it’s in poor condition.”
“It isn’t worth much, then?” I asked, disappointed.
“Sadly, no. These penny stamps would have been used with so much frequency that they simply aren’t rare. It pains me to disappoint you, Gwen, but I’ve seen these in countless amateur collections hopeful relatives bring to me after an elderly person dies.” He handed it back to me. “Please excuse me while I attire myself more appropriately.”
“Don’t hurry. Gwen and Hugh will be leaving in just a minute. They’ve still got a couple of suspects to put through the wringer.” Augusta winked at Gene and handed a box to Hugh.
“You know,” I said, “you own Beulah’s house, and no one’s going to bother you over there. You could do any sort of entertaining you’d like.”
“I know, but it still feels like Beulah’s. I’m afraid she would haunt me if I entertained a gentleman in her house.”
“I think what you mean to say is that she only has twin beds.” I stacked another box on the one that Hugh was already holding and gave her the third. “If you’re in such a hurry to get rid of us, at least you could help carry out the boxes.”
“Just stack that last one right on the top, and we’ll be out of your way. Coming, Gwen?”
When we got to the police station, Chris was sitting at the table in the
center of the room with his back to Ernesto. A country western station blared Christmas carols. Clive was working on a game of solitaire spread out on the deli counter.
Chris started to say something when we entered, but when he saw the boxes Hugh held, he clamped his thin lips together and crossed his arms over his chest. Ray sat with his boots propped on his desk gnawing a piece of beef jerky. Watching him work his jaws reminded me that I still hadn’t had Christmas dinner. I wondered if they had bothered to feed Ernesto. He looked about one meal away from the morgue. I dug round in the pocket of my coat and found a roll of mints that weren’t too fuzzy. I handed them to Ernesto, who gulped them down with enough gusto to answer my question.
“Can you explain how items stolen from Beulah Price’s house after she was killed ended up in a vehicle you were driving out of town?” Hugh set the boxes in front of Chris.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Chris slouched down in his chair.
“These boxes contain items reported stolen by Gwen earlier this week. They were part of the inventory Gwen and her sister conducted while executing Beulah’s estate.” Hugh pulled out his notebook and dropped his long shadow over Chris like a net over a fish.
“What makes you sure they were at Beulah’s? Whatever’s in there could have come from anywhere.” Chris jiggled his knee up and down. The gouged wood floor bounced under my feet like an earthquake in training.
“Some of these things are pretty distinctive.” Hugh pulled out the scrapbook. “Like this, for example. Eustace Freemont Hartwell. Not really a common name, is it?” Chris pushed his chair back from the table a little.
“Or how about this?” Hugh held the stamp between his thumb and forefinger and waggled it in front of Chris’s nose. “A stamp. An old, old stamp that appears to have detached from a letter that was in this box and is now missing. Now, I’ve been told there are a lot of those sorts of old stamps floating around the countryside, but the letters are still missing from the box. I assume you may have an idea of where they’ve gotten to. It would suit me just fine to assume you killed Beulah in order to go through her house and help yourself to whatever you wanted.”
Live Free or Die Page 18