Death by Chocolate Frosted Doughnut

by Sarah Graves

  “Silly things, they’re a pair of rescues. Won’t eat unless you shove their noses in it,” Willetta said with affectionate scorn as she led us into the parlor with its braided rugs, doily-clad tables, and floral-chintz-upholstered chair.

  It was full of books, too: on shelves flanking the sheer-draped windows, in stacks on the floor, and spread out on the settee she’d been sitting in.

  A string quartet played softly from a pair of speakers on the mantel. “Sit down, won’t you?” Willetta invited while the dogs nosed us pleasantly, their feathery tails wagging.

  Willetta was having bourbon on ice, and I accepted her offer of one just like it; Ellie, seeing as she was driving, had iced tea with a sprig of mint in it.

  “So”—Ellie turned to business—“you’re probably wondering why we dropped in on you like this.”

  But Willetta Beck didn’t seem surprised. “Yes, well, actually I’d heard that you two were . . . what’s the polite word?

  With her hands wrinkled and sun-spotted, her face thin-skinned and grooved into runnels, she was obviously quite elderly. But when she moved, she was quick and limber as a woman in the prime of life.

  “Snooping.” I supplied the word, and she laughed merrily.

  “That’s one way of putting it. But are you here to ask me about the . . . accident? I guess you’ve read about it in the Quoddy Tides?” There was a small flesh-colored bandage on her forehead. “If it was one,” she added. “I must say, though, it seemed very deliberate to me. One moment I was alone on the road and the next . . .”

  She bit her lip, recalling the event, then went on decisively. “No, it was deliberate. The police and the EMTs didn’t believe me, of course. I could tell they thought it was one of those things where the old lady gets flustered and runs into something.”

  The “something” in this case being a ditch, at least according to the Tides. “But I don’t get flustered, and I know what happened.”

  I got up, carrying my drink. The books stacked on all the surfaces were about horses: horse health, horse nutrition . . . She saw me examining them.

  “Yes, it’s a bit of an obsession with me. Always has been.”

  She waved at the crowded mantel over the ceramic-tiled fireplace, where a small blaze leapt pleasantly. Engraved silver cups, trays, plaques, and horse-shaped statuettes crowded the mantel, along with a dozen or so each of framed ribbons, diplomas, and photographs.

  “In my day I was quite the horsewoman,” Willetta said. “Nowadays everyone’s afraid I’ll fall off and break a hip.”

  She gave me a look that was no less piercing for the skimpiness of her lashes or the fading blue of her intelligent wide eyes.

  “They don’t know it, but it’s how I’d prefer to go, really. A nice ride and then a crash, maybe a brief pneumonia on my way out.”

  She laughed trillingly again, not seeming in the least to be a candidate for “going out,” as she put it. In the kitchen something wonderful was simmering, some kind of a stew.

  “But I don’t dare say it aloud,” she added, “or my health care provider”—she gave the words a dry twist—“will put me on the old-lady suicide watch.”

  One of the dogs lay down on a hooked rug in front of the fire. She watched it thoughtfully for a moment. Then:

  “But if you went to see Karen, it’s not my car crash you’re here to ask about. You want to know about Anna, don’t you?”

  Ellie and I glanced at each other in surprise, bringing another laugh from Willetta.

  “Please,” she said. “It’s been on the news that Henry Hadlyme died. Was murdered, that is. And Karen called me this afternoon.”

  For the first time her voice hardened. “Also, I think being run through by a sword qualifies as murder, don’t you? I mean I doubt it was accidental.” She rolled her eyes. “And of course it was about Anna. Who could ever believe anything else?”

  “And you think your own car accident, that in your opinion was not accidental . . . that it also had to do with—”

  She cut me off. “I was on the ferry that day all those years ago, you see. I was going to visit my friend on Deer Island. We were planning a picnic.”

  Well, there was a surprise, that she’d witnessed Anna Benoit’s final voyage. Her voice softened with the memory.

  “Some people brought their cars—the ones who were going on to the next ferry at the other end of the island, to New Brunswick. But Anna and I were on foot. We stood by the rail watching the porpoises.”

  Ellie spoke up. “Did Anna say anything about—”

  Willetta Beck shook her head firmly. “About Henry? No. Maybe I should have asked. But she looked as if she wanted to be let alone.”

  Out in the kitchen a timer dinged; for the stew, I imagined, which now smelled as if she were running a French restaurant in here. Ignoring it, she finished her drink and continued.

  “I went to the ferry’s other side when we got to the Old Sow whirlpool. I wanted to see the piglets, you know? The bunches of baby whirlpools that the big one throws off?”

  I recalled them from our trip of the previous day, the dark, glassy swirls that looked so harmless but weren’t. “And did you? See them, I mean?”

  “Oh, yes. Dozens. The current was strong that day, and I recall thinking that it was like seeing into a volcano, so powerful.” She looked up. “But cold, of course, instead of hot. Even the spray flying up into my face was like ice chips, I recall.”

  “Was anyone else out on the deck besides you two?” I asked. “And where she stood, was it where anyone else could see her?”

  “No, there was a van on the ferry, and it was between her and the ferry’s pilot house,” Willetta replied. “So I’m sure the pilot was being honest when he told the police he didn’t see what happened.”

  “And you didn’t, either,” said Ellie. “Because if you had, you’d have told the police about that.”

  “Correct.” She got up to poke the fire, which had collapsed.

  “I was watching the whirlpool, as I said, when I heard a scream. Other people heard it, too, and ran to where Anna had been standing.” She sighed heavily. “But it was too late to save her, she’d already been carried away, and with the tide running hard and the currents surging the way they always do out there . . .”

  I understood; if you want to dispose of a body, the Old Sow is the place to put it. It could end up in Nova Scotia, or on a beach in some rarely visited cove on some island, or it might never come up.

  “Her body,” Willetta Beck said, “has never been found.”

  The dog on the rug shifted and sighed. It was cozy and warm in here, and I felt a sudden reluctance to go back out into the dark. Somehow talking about a girl’s long-ago fall—if it was one—from the Deer Island ferry made the night seem menacing, especially when Willetta Beck went on:

  “Someone must have pushed her, though. I’m certain of it. Always have been, though at the time the police called it an accident.”

  Ellie frowned, getting up. We’d both noticed that Willetta Beck hadn’t put another stick of wood on the dying fire or offered another drink, hints enough that our visit should be drawing to a close.

  “But there are railings on the ferry,” Ellie said, “always have been, so how could—”

  “Exactly.” Accompanying us to the door, our hostess nodded enthusiastically. I noticed again how limber and in good shape she seemed, then glimpsed a possible reason at the end of the hall.

  Another room, one that we hadn’t entered, was full of exercise equipment: a stationary bike, some free weights, a screen with VCR tapes stacked by it . . .

  No wonder she seemed so surprisingly fit for her age: she worked at it. Ellie glanced in, also, taking in the elaborate setup.

  But not commenting. “You’d have to try pretty hard to fall off that ferry by accident,” she said. “And if Anna didn’t jump, then . . .”

  Willetta opened the door for us. Behind the rail fence the two ponies whickered quietly under the yard light
s.

  “But why don’t you think she jumped?” Ellie asked suddenly.

  Her car was only a few yards away under the trees by a small barn that I hadn’t noticed earlier, but we lingered on the red brick path gathering our sweaters around us to gain a few last moments.

  “From what I’ve heard, Anna had reasons, and surely that’s a simpler explanation than . . .”

  In the warm yellow light streaming out of her snug, civilized little dwelling, Willetta Beck’s face looked older and harder, her pale blue eyes flat disks gazing into the night.

  “Murder?” She finished Ellie’s question and turned to us. “I’ll tell you why,” she said. “The way I told the police, only they didn’t listen.”

  Ellie stepped out onto the driveway, her feet crunching on the gravel, and stopped as something about the small red barn attracted her attention.

  “Just an old lady wanting to get in on all the excitement so she could have something to gossip about with her old-lady friends, they probably thought,” Willetta Beck went on.

  She’d been elderly even then, I realized, mentally revising her age upward; hard to believe, but now I supposed she must be at least eighty.

  Ellie had made her way into the shadows by the rail-fenced horse paddock, on the other side of her car. Willetta still gazed the other way, toward the road and the car lights flickering at the end of it.

  “Well,” I said. “Thanks for the drinks.”

  Her old eyes turned slowly to me and she held out a hand, which was strong and steady, her grip firm with nothing tentative about it.

  “Thank you both for coming,” she replied. Ellie was getting into her car. “Come back again and I’ll introduce you to the ponies.”

  But then she added quietly, so only I could hear, “I know why you came. And believe me, if I could have killed that horrid fellow myself, I would have.”

  I stepped away reflexively, the malice in her voice so repellent suddenly that it was hard to believe this woman had been entertaining us in her parlor moments earlier, as sweet as you please.

  “But as you can see . . .” She lifted her arm, and for the first time I saw her right hand. It was shrunken, withered, and malformed, with a long scar running up into the sleeve of her sweater.

  “Fell off a horse as a girl,” she explained matter-of-factly. “Not that it ever kept me from doing anything. I learned to adapt.” Then, watching Ellie pull the car up to where we stood: “And Henry’s stab wound was inflicted from the front, I assume?”

  I allowed as how it was, and she nodded almost wistfully, as if she really did wish she’d done the inflicting.

  “If he’d been stabbed in the back, I might not be out of the picture in the suspect department. I did hate him enough, and in fact I was in downtown Eastport that day,” she said.

  More news. “And you hated him because . . .”

  “Why, because he murdered his poor little wife, of course. Or had her murdered, paid or maybe even blackmailed someone to do it.”

  It struck me again, just as it had when Karen Carrolton said it, that these were a lot of conclusions to jump to. “To get rid of her,” I said, “so he wouldn’t be stuck here with her and the baby instead of following his dreams to New York?”

  I didn’t think so. He’d already left, and already established that he wouldn’t be sending money, but Willetta Beck nodded, accepting this further step in the narrative.

  “And stuck with the older child, too, of course. When I think of what poor Anna must’ve been going through. . . .”

  Ellie was now in the car waiting patiently, but I could tell by the way her fingers twiddled restlessly on the steering wheel that she was practically bursting with some new fact she was dying to tell me about.

  Willetta Beck continued, “But as I was saying, I do think you’d need both hands to stab somebody from the front, wouldn’t you? Because they’d try to fend you off, of course, and you’d have to . . .”

  A chill went through me; she’d imagined it very clearly . . . unless of course she really had witnessed the event or participated in it. I ended the conversation as smoothly as I could, allowing over my shoulder that a visit to the ponies sounded delightful and we’d be sure to do it soon.

  Then, in a final flurry of pleasantly meaningless words and phrases, I reached the car at last, and Ellie and I crunched back down the gravel driveway under the trees, out into the night.

  * * *

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Ellie said, switching on the car’s heater as we sped back toward Eastport.

  “I already have something I don’t believe,” I replied. “Henry didn’t kill Anna. Why would he?”

  The night rushed by, the dark swathes of evergreens crowding up to the road punctuated by lights from the little houses spaced widely apart.

  “He didn’t have to kill her to get free of her,” I went on. “He was already gone. Anna couldn’t have made Henry Hadlyme come back to Eastport, or send money, either, so why . . . ?”

  Ellie shrugged, her eyes on the dark road ahead. “Willetta’s got what amounts to an alibi, though: that she’s not physically capable of—”

  She stopped suddenly as a large catlike animal ran across the road in front of us; took the embankment on the far side in a single long, lithe stride; and vanished into the woods.

  “Bobcat,” she commented, pleased to have seen one.

  Me too; the tufted ears and stubby tail were a rare sight even around here. But then I yawned. Being suspected of killing someone was tiring, I was beginning to find out.

  “On the other hand . . .” Ellie returned to Willetta Beck’s supposed disability. “If she can manage horses, why wouldn’t she be able to—”

  “Only if she took him by surprise,” I said. I let my head, still thudding away painfully, loll back against the car seat.

  “Because, just think about it,” Ellie agreed, “he’s got two arms to hold her off with, and she’s got just one, and her good hand’s holding the . . .”

  Right, the cutlass, which she’d have stolen from Wade’s weapons display down on the breakwater. And how would she have gotten the stuffed parrot?

  “Besides, Hadlyme was no Mister Universe,” I put in, “but still he must’ve outweighed her by sixty pounds. And he was what, forty or so years younger than she is?”

  The car’s smooth motion and Ellie’s good driving lulled my head pain a little. “And if her attempt failed, he’d be alive and able to say who’d attacked him,” I finished.

  So maybe this whole trip had been a waste of time. I sighed heavily.

  “You know what, though?” said Ellie after a while of no talking; we were both very tired. “There’s a white sedan in her barn.”

  I sat up sharply, my eyes snapping open. “No kidding? But why didn’t you . . . could you tell if it was the one we saw near Karen Carrolton’s earlier?”

  In the dashboard’s glow Ellie’s lips curved faintly. “You didn’t give me a chance. But it was there, all right. Can’t swear it’s the same one, but it would be quite the coincidence if it’s not.”

  I twisted around to peer out the car’s rear window; no one was following. Not now. Not yet....

  “But how could that make sense? Willetta Beck fakes an attack on herself, says a white sedan ran her off the road . . . why?”

  Ellie took the turn onto Route 190, headed toward town. Soon we were on the causeway with the dark water spread out on both sides.

  “And this happens right after a similar vehicle nearly does the same thing to us,” I added.

  Ellie watched the roadway carefully. “The timing’s interesting, that’s for sure.”

  Just off our right bumper, our headlights illuminated a trudging racoon; when she’d steered carefully past, she went on:

  “And then there’s the Jenny.”

  Right, because what could the mysterious gun-equipped sailboat have to do with Hadlyme’s murder?

  And yet it must be tied in somehow, since otherwise it wa
s more than the mother of all coincidences; it was flat-out unbelievable.

  We swung around the long, dark curves past the Eastport garage, the old power plant, the airport with its runway lights glowing and its hangar buildings gaping, and finally the Bay City Mobil station, closed for the night.

  “Want me to take you home?” Ellie asked as we pulled onto Water Street and stopped in front of the Moose.

  Everything downtown was silent and dark, even the last of the fake pirate stragglers all gone to bed. It was what I should’ve done, too, but with my skull pounding out a thudding rhythm of misery, I knew I wouldn’t sleep.

  Besides, Amity Jones was still around here somewhere, likely planning my imminent apprehension for the crime of skewering Henry Hadlyme. And if these were my last hours of freedom, I wanted to be awake for them.

  “No,” I said. “If all those cops have really gone chasing after that sailboat somewhere, the street will get clear and the festival will reopen. So we’d better be ready.”

  Which is why over the next few hours we baked a fudge layer cake and began an éclair recipe that would get completed in the morning. Ellie mixed more butter and sugar, beat in eggs and vanilla, and began adding dry ingredients while I made cake frosting and created room in the cooler for the big bowl of éclair dough to begin chilling.

  But my heart wasn’t in it. By tomorrow morning, I imagined deputies would be on their way here from Augusta, carrying a warrant for my arrest.

  And I’d be in custody soon thereafter, I expected, because Amity Jones seemed tough, smart, ambitious, and new at her job, and wanting a win very badly on account of all those qualities.

  Badly enough to try using a family relationship to Bob Arnold, for instance, to get information out of him, and maybe even enough to overlook—not deliberately, perhaps, but still—whatever didn’t make sense about her suspicions of me.

  “Ellie.” I stretched clear plastic wrap over the bowl of éclair dough. “Listen, if for any reason I’m not around for a while . . .”

  She bit her lip, patting a brioche loaf into shape. We’d made a dozen crescent rolls, too, out of a quick-rising sweet dough recipe she’d invented, and since they were nearly cool I made frosting for them, the simple old-fashioned kind that everyone likes: butter, confectioner’s sugar, and melted baking chocolate.