The Milburn Big Box Set

by Nancy McGovern

  Sam lay with his head on one end of the couch and his feet thrown up, a laptop balanced on his chest. As the two women entered, he pushed it aside and sprang up. He smiled at Nora, though she could tell he was impatiently waiting for her to leave.

  “Sam…” Tina smiled, looking a little shaky. “Listen, I don’t know if you heard about me and Selena.”

  “We can talk about it later,” Sam said, looking at Nora.

  “Now Sam, she was there. She saw the whole thing,” Tina said. “Selena started it. I was just trying to—”

  “All I know is that she sent me a text telling me she wasn’t going to come over tonight,” Sam said. “I tried calling her, I tried messaging her, but she won’t reply. I’m worried, Tina.” His voice was patient, though his eyes had the beginning of anger in them.

  “This isn’t fair,” Tina said. “She started it!”

  “She’s sensitive about having to ask for our help,” Sam said. “You know that. So why did you have to go tell her that she’s a burden on me?”

  “I didn’t say that!” Tina said. “Well… not exactly. I don’t really remember what I said. I was so annoyed.”

  “I know how it is when you’re annoyed,” Sam said. “You say the first thing that comes into your mind, without caring what the other person feels. Now that’s ok with me, Tina, and maybe it’s okay with your family. But Selena? Couldn’t you have been just a little bit more careful?”

  “Why do you always take her side?” Tina said, her voice cracking.

  Nora was slowly edging towards the door, hoping to escape before either of them spotted her.

  Sam noticed and put his hand up, palm out. “Stop, Nora. You’re welcome to stay here. I’m going to have to go to every hotel in town and figure out where Selena is.”

  “She’s a grown woman, you don’t have to go running off to—”

  “She’s my sister, and my mom made me promise I’d take care of her,” Sam said. The expression on his face made it clear that those were going to be his final words on the subject.

  Awkwardly, Nora played with the door handle. This was almost physically painful to her.

  “Sam, I’m sorry I said that to her,” Tina said. “But I think she’s just emotionally blackmailing you. Can’t you see it? She’s overreacting for no reason.”

  “It’s not like her,” Sam said.

  “It is just like her,” Tina said. “She dotes on you, she bullies you, and when you don’t give her what she wants, she blackmails you.”

  Sam sighed. “I’m still going out to look for her.”

  “I’ll come,” Tina said, following him.

  “I… guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.” Nora took the chance to sprint to her car, and waved goodbye. “Unless… do you two need help?”

  “No. Get going. We’ll find her soon, I’ll say sorry and convince her to come home.” Tina rolled her eyes. “All in a day’s work. I’ll see you at 9am tomorrow. We’ve got to discuss the uniforms.”

  But that isn’t what happened.

  Very late that night, Nora was awakened by a phone call. Fifteen minutes later, still in her pajamas, she had rushed to the library. Three police cars were parked outside, lights flashing. Tina was leaning against the hood of one, her face pale. She had a hand on Sam’s head. He was on his knees, clutching her legs, sobbing against them, as Tina tried to console him.

  “What happened?” Nora asked Sean.

  The sheriff had his hat off and ran a hand through his hair. “There’s been a death in the library,” he said.

  *****

  Chapter 5

  It seemed like a ghastly ritual now. Another unnatural death, and the townspeople were all gathered at Anna’s pancake house. There was no pretense of being there for her french toast, though. At random intervals along the oak floor, people huddled together. Conversation rose and receded like ocean waves.

  As Nora walked in, people nodded and moved aside to make room for her. She slipped into a booth where Mayor Almand and his wife sat sipping coffee with the town doctor, Kurt Neil.

  “How is Tina now?” May Almand asked. For once, there was no sarcasm or asperity in her voice. She seemed genuinely concerned. Nora supposed that they were friends, having been on many committees together.

  “Nora was with her until the early hours of the morning,” Sean, still in his sheriff’s uniform, said as he strode up to the group and settled in.

  “So were you, Sean,” Dr. Neil said.

  “Well, that’s just part of my job.” Sean waved it off.

  “I gave Sam a sedative, May. He should be sleeping through most of the day,” Dr. Neil said to the mayor’s wife.

  “We have to visit Sam and Tina, of course,” Mayor Brett Almand said. “This will hit Sam hard. He just lost his mother a year ago.”

  “It’s been two years, I think,” May said. “In any case, poor Sam was very attached to them both.”

  Mayor Almand shifted in his seat, his portly form uncomfortably pressing against the sharp edge of the table. He extracted a buzzing phone from his pocket, took a look at the screen and dismissed the call.

  “It was definitely murder, wasn’t it?” May Almand asked, lowering her voice. “I know you can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, Sean…”

  “I can on this one,” Sean said. “She was stabbed in the back with a letter opener. Death occurred around midnight.”

  “How horrible.” May shuddered. “Oh this is a plague upon us. A curse.”

  “Now May,” the mayor said strictly. “That’s no way to talk. You’ll get people scared.”

  “Well, they should be,” May said. “How many deaths has that been in the last few years? You’d think with the amount of resources we dedicate to the sheriff’s department, we’d have a safer town.”

  “Unfortunately, there is no device that can help us prevent murder,” Sean said coldly. “What we do promise is to catch the guilty party. If you notice, we’ve done that with all the previous murders. I’m sure my department will be successful this time too.”

  “Well, what about the hit to our revenues?” May said. “We’ve been trying our best to improve tourism in this town and now this!”

  “May. Calm down,” the mayor said, his voice tight. “Sean is…” a buzzing sound filled the air, and once again, the mayor grabbed his phone and dismissed the call.

  “Any leads on the case yet?” he asked.

  Sean’s face remained impassive. “No comments,” he said.

  “You’ll be saying a lot of that soon.” May sighed. “The buzzards will descend on us. You wait and see. Selena wasn’t a bestselling author, but she had her fair share of fans.”

  The mayor’s phone rang again.

  “For goodness’ sake, Brett,” May snapped. “Just go outside and take the call before all that vibration causes an earthquake.”

  “Sorry, dearest.” He cut the call again, and this time, switched off the phone.

  “We ought to organize a memorial service,” May said. “After all, Selena wasn’t just a nobody. She was the head of the Milburn Arts council.”

  “She’s also published a few critically acclaimed books,” Dr. Neil said mildly.

  “You were in one of them, weren’t you?” May laughed. “That one about the town doctor who has an affair with the—”

  “Yes, well, it said right on the front page, All Characters are fictional and any resemblance is a coincidence,” Dr. Neil said hurriedly.

  May laughed. “Oh, it was very coincidental alright. She described you exactly. A nose that would put a balloon to shame, and hair that had a habit of standing in perfectly ordered military precision, except in times of stress, when they would climb down his forehead and mount an attack on his eyes.”

  Dr. Neil flipped his hair out of his eyes. “That is certainly nothing like me. You’re in a terrible mood today, May.”

  “Shouldn’t I be? Selena was a quiet woman with no enemies. If she could be killed, so could I.”

  “I
wouldn’t say she had no enemies,” Dr. Neil said. “Didn’t she just have a fight with what’s his name at the library?”

  “If you mean that little squabble with Tina, why—”

  “No, I meant the other author.” Dr. Neil clicked his fingers. “My memory is going. What is his name?”

  “Robert Foxworthy,” the Mayor supplied.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “I escorted him out of town personally last night,” Sean said. “He’s long gone.”

  “Oh no he isn’t,” Dr. Neil said. “I saw him just today. He’s staying down at Buckle’s B&B.”

  “Are you serious?” Sean’s face turned red. He got up. “What time did you see him?”

  “About 6am. There was an old lady who’d had a mild angina on the second floor. He came storming out of his room to complain about the noise, but calmed down when he saw the situation.”

  “Excuse me,” Sean said. “I’ve got places I need to be.” He stood up, nodded at the others, and walked away.

  He hadn’t said a word to her, Nora noted. Not that she’d been particularly chatty herself, but still, she and Sean had been very good friends once. It was sad that ever since he got his new girlfriend, they’d both chosen not to talk. She supposed it was her fault, really. She could have been more supportive of him. Then again, maybe she was being very self-centered. Sean must feel a lot of pressure now, and his friendship with Nora was probably the last thing on his mind.

  “The elections for sheriff got cancelled last year, what with JJ’s death,” May said to her husband. “But maybe it’s time to consider calling them in again, Brett.”

  “May?” The mayor looked surprised. “I thought you like Sean.”

  “I certainly did, but these days…especially with his new…friend. I feel like he’s distracted all the time. It’s a tough job. Maybe he needs a break.”

  “Who do you think should be sheriff then?” Nora asked, a little angrily. “You?”

  “Don’t be silly, Nora.” May sniffed. “There’s proper procedure for these things. We have qualified men in this town.”

  “Ah, like your nephew Darcy, perhaps?” Dr. Neil smiled. “A nice boy. A little young to be sheriff though.”

  May turned red. “What you’re implying, doctor, is simply outrageous. I have always had the best interests of the town at heart.”

  “Of course you have,” Dr. Neil said. “It’s just coincidence if the town’s interests mesh perfectly with yours.”

  “We have work to do.” May stood up. “I don’t need to sit here listening to this.”

  “Yes, you have a memorial to organize, don’t you?” Dr. Neil said, “And you have to worry about how to attract tourists at the same time.”

  “Dr. Neil.” He’d taken May’s jibe at him to heart, Nora could see. Still, it wasn’t wise to tangle with May Almand. “Dr. Neil, won’t you order another round of coffee? I’m going to get some myself.”

  “No thank you, Nora.” The doctor stood up. “I’d better head down to the sheriff’s office to check on the forensics report.” He took out his wallet, but the Mayor waved it off.

  “The bill’s on me, Kurt,” he said genially, trying to make up for his wife’s behavior.

  “No thank you, Brett,” the Doctor said. “I prefer to pay for my own debts.”

  “Honestly May...” The Mayor looked exasperated.

  “He’s still sore about Selena’s book,” May said. “Doesn’t like mention of it.”

  “Was it really that bad?” Nora asked.

  “She wrote about a doctor who had an affair with his own patient and then condemned her to the funny factory,” May said. “What do you think?”

  “That’s not true! Is it?”

  May shrugged. “If half the things in her last book were true, I suppose Selena would have a lot more enemies than just Tina and Robert in this town.”

  *****

  Chapter 6

  At Tina’s house, the shades were drawn. Family members stood aimlessly in the foyer, some spilling over to the kitchen and the TV room. None of them knew Nora, but none of them seemed to notice or care as she walked from one room to another, searching for her friend.

  Along the way, her ears picked up the conversations that were being carried on in hushed whispers around her.

  In one corner, two old ladies in hushed voices:

  “... all go to Sam?”

  “I think not. Selena wasn’t very close to him, was she?”

  “Oh, she must have been. Sam seemed very upset. His wife, though, now there’s a shark if I’ve ever seen one. Not one tear out of her.”

  A raucous man with a glass of whiskey in hand:

  “I tell you this, the poor girl didn’t deserve it, no sir. There’s people asking questions like what was she doing alone in the library that late at night, but I say, that shouldn’t matter. Murder’s evil whether in a dark alley at midnight or the comfort of home on a Sunday afternoon.”

  A nervous looking man speaking to a man in a navy suit:

  “So what I heard is that she had no will. But Sam’s only her step-brother, isn’t he? Who does it all go to?”

  “The people it always eventually goes to when the will isn’t clear and the family members are fighting. Their lawyers.”

  In another room, a radio was on, and Zany Motts sang a slow ballad. “The moon turns dark/ My heart knows better/ But my shrunken hands still clutch around/ Your very last letter.”

  Nora climbed the stairs, and finally, in a window seat on the second floor, found Tina, staring at the rain outside, her knees pressed to her chest, her arms cupped around her face.

  “Nora!” Her face looked like gravity had doubled itself in the last 24 hours. “I was hoping you’d be back.”

  “How are you doing?” Nora asked. “How’s Sam?”

  “Just fine,” Tina said, “We’re planning on organizing a little swing dance, and then going to Paris.”

  Nora said nothing, keeping a sympathetic hand on Tina’s shoulder, and Tina buried her face in her knees. Her shoulders shook slightly. Looking up, she said, “I’m an evil woman, Nora.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean it,” Tina said. “I thought I’d be unhappy. I thought I’d have some shreds of grief, and rationally, I hate that Selena was murdered, I hate that a life was so abruptly taken away. But grief? There is no grief. I feel nothing.”

  Nora sat next to her, keeping a hand on her knee. “You weren’t very close.”

  “No, I suppose we weren’t,” Tina said. “I think it’d be hypocritical of me to shed tears if I didn’t mean it. Nor am I capable of singing her praises when I didn’t like her much. I respected her work as a writer, and I think she cared about Sam. But as a person, she just wasn’t the kind I could get close to. Still, it’s tragic, what happened to her.”

  “You have to be careful,” Nora said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” Nora hesitated. “Tina, honesty’s well and good, but we live in a small town. I understand why you’re stone faced right now. Others won’t.”

  “Won’t they?” Tina laughed. “I can’t bring myself to care. The one person I care about is lying in bed, sedated. It’s like revisiting the shock of his mother’s death all over again. Sam’s… Sam’s fractured, Nora.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nora said, knowing the words would not be enough.

  “I wish I could find out who did this,” Tina said, her lips curving to bare her teeth. “I feel like… I’d beat him within an inch of his life. Not for what he did to Selena, but for what he did to my husband. I don’t know how to console him. I was never very good at that sort of thing.” She took a breath. “What do I do, Nora?”

  “Just be there for him,” Nora said. “He has to fight his grief alone, but he’ll rest on your shoulder every time he’s tired. That’s all anyone can do. Offer a shoulder.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Tina smiled. “Thank you, then.”

 
“Actually, I was here to drop off a casserole,” Nora said. “I didn’t want you to worry about food for a few weeks.”

  “If you’ve put it in the kitchen, that casserole will be finished before dinner.” Tina laughed. “All of Sam’s relatives have decided to treat my house as their personal hotel. Thank goodness the house is big enough for me to escape. I need my own space.”

  “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

  “You? Not a chance, partner.” Tina smiled. “I’m actually glad you’re here. You’ll help me take my mind off the whole thing.”

  “We can talk about whatever you’d like,” Nora offered.

  “You don’t think I’m being selfish, do you?” Tina looked suddenly like a small child asking permission from her teacher. “I mean, I know that ideally, I should be a crying wreck who’s by her husband’s side 24/7.”

  “Tina. Relax. There’s no right way to approach grief, and just because you’re honest enough to admit you don’t feel much, doesn’t make you a bad human being.”

  “I don’t know.” Tina looked unsure. “I feel like all the things I thought I knew about myself, about Sam, they’re all slipping away from under my feet. Sam’s changed since we got the news. I feel like… oh, I feel guilty even saying this, but I feel like those three men in that movie where a baby is suddenly dropped outside their house, and they have to learn how to keep it.” She caught the look on Nora’s head and shook her head. “You do think I’m selfish. I see it. I suppose I am. I just want… I just want my Sam back to normal, and Selena to be alive and all this to be a nightmare.”

  “What was she like?” Nora said. “I know you were irritated at her dropping crumbs under your table and bossing Sam around, but what was she like as a person?”

  “Selena?” Tina considered this. After a long pause, she said, “You know her story, don’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Before she had Sam, his mother was married right out of high school,” Tina said. “The man was a loser. He wanted to be a motivational speaker, and moved all across America, living in a van. His mother had a bad time. Selena was her child from that marriage. It lasted eight years, and she only left when he nearly killed her. She moved back to their home town, so that she could raise Selena as far away from her father as possible. She knew that returning to Milburn was the last thing he would do.”