A Dodgy Death

by Jacqueline M Green

  “Wait! I’m here!”

  “Aaargh!” Clarissa screamed as she stood over stood over me, a hand to her chest and her eyes wide in shock. “Kat, what are you doing?”

  I sat back in the bedding and began to laugh.

  “I’m so sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Startled is an understatement. I nearly had a heart attack.” She gestured around the bedding, one hand still to her chest, then knelt down beside me, looking at me intently. “Are you quite all right? What’s going on?”

  I leaned back on my hands and looked at her, still laughing. “I thought you were the killer coming up the stairs, so I hid under the bedding.”

  Her eyes grew big as she sat down hard on the floor. “Why would you think that? I’ve known your aunt for years. She was one of my dearest friends.”

  The laughter faded and I cleared my throat. It was time to come clean. I twisted one of the ends of the sheets as I tried to find the right words.

  “When I last talked to Aunt Selma, she told me not to trust ‘C’.” I made the hard “C” sound in my throat.

  Clarissa frowned. “What does that mean, don’t trust ‘C’”? She made the same sound.

  I held up both hands. “I don’t know. It sounded like she was telling me to not trust someone whose name starts with the letter ‘C’.”

  My eyes couldn’t quite meet Clarissa’s during the awkward silence that followed. When she spoke, her voice was quiet.

  “That’s why you didn’t want to talk about it this morning. You were afraid to say that because you thought I might have killed Selma.”

  I finally looked up and held up both hands in defeat.

  “I’m sorry. I literally just met you yesterday, so I wasn’t sure. But as I sat on the top step thinking this afternoon, I remembered that my aunt trusted you completely, and so I thought that I should do the same.”

  She gave me a little smile. I reached over and threw my arms around her. Clarissa seemed surprised, but she hugged me back. As I let her go, she held onto my shoulders and looked sternly into my face.

  “We Brits aren’t much for hugging, but I’ll let it go this time.”

  Then her face broke into a smile, and I was surprised at how relieved I felt. Apparently, I had been holding in the stress of telling her about the “C” sound. Now it was out in the open.

  “Now, let’s get this laundry into the washer. Jaime will be here soon with the pizza and we can get down to some sleuthing.”

  I sat up quickly. “The constable is coming here?”

  Clarissa picked up sheets and began putting them into the basket in the dumbwaiter closet.

  “Sure, why? He’s done a lot of investigations and I thought he could help. Besides, I told him to bring the pizza.”

  My shoulders dropped. Another “C” was coming to dinner.

  Chapter 11

  Clarissa and I finished starting the laundry and I told her about my visit to the Beatrix Potter museum.

  “They’re worth that much? Selma never said.” Clarissa sounded surprised, her perfectly sculpted eyebrows raised.

  “Mr. McPherson seemed very excited about them,” I told her.

  A knock came at the front door. I glanced at Clarissa, then trekked down the hall to the front.

  Constable Jaime Allen and Alex Lewis from the grocery store stood on the front porch. They waved through the glass and held up two pizzas along with six-packs of soda and beer. I flung open the door and gestured for them to come inside.

  “What’s up, guys?”

  They burst out laughing.

  “That is soooo American. ‘What’s up, guys’?” the constable said, trying for an American accent.

  I bit back a smile and put my hands on my hips. “I do not sound like that.”

  “Actually, yes, a little bit, you do,” Alex Lewis said.

  They wiped their shoes on the front mat, then strolled past me down the hallway, leaving me to close the door behind them.

  Clarissa looked up in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  Jaime’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “You invited me. You said you and Kat were going to come up with a list of suspects and that I should join you.”

  She shook her head and pointed at the grocer. “No, why is he here?”

  The grocer readied the pizza as he answered for the constable. “Jaime came in to buy beer and pizza because that’s what Americans eat, and I told him he needed to bring something non-alcoholic instead.”

  I threw him a sharp glance. “Mr. Lewis, how would you possibly know that?”

  He shrugged. “You didn’t have any alcohol in your basket, and I knew Selma didn’t have any here. You can call me Alex, by the way.”

  It was true. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but beer and pizza once in a while worked rather well together. Still, I appreciated his thoughtfulness.

  “Then, when Jaime told me why he was coming over, I told him he’d need a clear head and someone smarter than himself. So I came, too.”

  He smiled, rather pleased with himself, and sat down at the table, reaching over to snag the first slice of pizza.

  “Har. Har.” Jaime rolled his eyes and flopped into the chair next to mine. He popped open a soda and drank deeply, then wiped his mouth and looked at me. “Don’t mind him. He’s not so bad once you get to know him. Now, we’re here to figure out—”

  “Really, just discuss,” I broke in.

  He looked at me. “Discuss then. We’re here to discuss who might have wanted to kill poor Selma, not that we’re even convinced it was anything more than an accident, but just in case it might be, we are here. To discuss it.”

  “Way to sell it, Jaime,” Clarissa mumbled from across the table.

  “Well, it’s quite true, isn’t it,” Alex broke in. “That we don’t know for sure that she was killed, that she didn’t just take a right tumble down the stairs.”

  Silence reigned as we chewed on the pizza — and Jaime’s words — swigging down soda and beer for a few minutes.

  Reluctantly, I set down my slice of pizza. I would have been content to just continue eating, but since they had come to help me, I needed to step up.

  I stood and faced the three at the table, ticking off the reasons on my fingers.

  “One, Aunt Selma knew those stairs like the back of her hand. It’s extremely unlikely that she would have fallen down them.”

  “She was in her late eighties,” Alex pointed out, literally emphasizing his point with the triangular slice of pizza in his hand.

  “Two,” I continued, nodding my head in acknowledgement, but moving on. “Aunt Selma called me and told me that someone was trying to kill her just three days before she died. Three, the illustrations she found could be worth a lot of money, giving nearly anyone motive, and, four,” I went on, glancing at Clarissa, who nodded her head almost imperceptibly. “And four, Aunt Selma told me not to trust ‘C’.” Already I felt silly making that “C” sound.

  “C?” Jaime and Alex exchanged a puzzled look.

  I shrugged. “Well, kind of a ‘K,’ a hard ‘C.’ We got cut off before she could finish her warning, and she never picked up when I tried to call her back.”

  Jaime sat back in his chair, his brow furrowed, his mouth busy chewing.

  Spinning on my heel, I strode to the from sitting room, then returned to the kitchen with the pad of paper and pen. I set the list I had created on the table in front of them. Then I snatched it back up, drew a line through Clarissa’s name, and set it back on the table.

  “Here’s what I have so far. You knew Aunt Selma better. Maybe you can add to it.”

  All eyes went to the list and an awkward silence fell. S AI ran my eyes back over the list, the slice of pizza on its way to my mouth froze.

  We all stared at the third name on the list — Constable Allen.

  “I-I-I,” I stammered. “I’m sorry, but as you know, it could be nearly anyone.”

  Alex burst out la
ughing. “Well done, Kat. This is a great start. Who else have you considered?”

  “If it makes you feel better, she suspected me first.” Clarissa popped open the lid of a can of beer.

  “Ah, Clarissa,” Alex murmured, emphasizing the “C” sound. “You did have motive and opportunity.”

  She shot him a look. “Can it, Alex. For all we know, she could have meant ‘crazy grocery man’.”

  Alex laughed, then stopped and looked chagrined. “You don’t really think so, right?”

  Clarissa shrugged as she bit into a slice of pizza.

  Jaime frowned as he shoved another bite of pizza into his mouth. I was sure this wouldn’t be the last I would hear about his name being on the list.

  I filled Alex and Jaime in on my visit to the Beatrix Potter museum and how the curator said the illustrations could be worth nearly eighty thousand pounds.

  Clarissa frowned. “I’ve been thinking about that since you told me, Kat. That seems like something Selma would have mentioned to me. We talked about the papers quite a lot.”

  “Sure, but why would McPherson lie about something like that?” That seemed a little farfetched to me, and the others seemed to agree.

  “If the alleged killer wasn’t after the illustrations, what was he after?” Jaime looked from face to face. “C’mon, think, people. If someone is not going to profit in some way, they usually don’t commit a crime, much less a murder. At least, that’s been my experience in law enforcement.”

  “Come across a lot of murderers in this wee town, have you, lad?” Alex’s eyes twinkled.

  “Shuddup, you lot,” Jaime waved away his words. “You know I worked in London for years before I came here.”

  Something Jaime said caught my attention.

  “What if it was a crime of passion?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter and looking at Jaime. “What if it wasn’t about profit? What if it was passion?”

  A small smile played at Jaime’s mouth. “Kat, you do know your aunt was eighty-seven or eighty-eight years old, right?”

  “Come up with something else then,” I shot back.

  “There might not be anything else,” he retorted, all smiles swept from his face.

  “Then why did you come tonight?”

  He glared at me, then at Clarissa, and back to me. “Because we don’t know for sure, and I thought I could be useful. Clearly, I’m not being very much that.”

  I stood up and moved away from the table, leaning against the kitchen counter and crossing my arms for a moment. The silence in the kitchen was palpable. I blew out a breath.

  “No, it’s not you, Jaime, it’s me. I’m sorry. I guess I’m still trying to wrap my head around the possibility that Aunt Selma just fell.”

  Jaime got up and stood next to me, pointing toward the back door.

  “I would agree with you except for that. It could be linked to Selma’s death, so I think we should explore more options. Is that fair?”

  Our eyes met and I smiled into his. “That’s fair.”

  As he walked back to the table, he continued. “Although I can’t believe I’ve already got the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ talk. I’ve known you literally for a day.”

  We all laughed, and I rejoined them at the table.

  “You know there is someone else who isn’t on the list,” Alex speculated as I sat down. The older man sat comfortably in the rail-back kitchen chair, one foot resting on the opposite knee on which he balanced a can of soda.

  All eyes swiveled to Alex.

  “And that would be?” Jaime prompted him impatiently.

  “Irene Mulligan.”

  I looked from face to face. “The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. Who is Irene?”

  Alex leaned forward as if he had a story to tell.

  “Irene and Selma were the best of friends for years, decades actually. Irene was a little younger than Selma, but they were thick as thieves, shall we say? Until…,” he trailed off.

  “Until what?” I fed right into his story.

  Clarissa jumped in. “Until the Great Falling Out in aught eight,” she intoned.

  My gaze ping-ponged between them. I gestured for them to hurry up with the story.

  “Irene was known to spread gossip far and wide, but she made the error of spreading gossip about Selma,” Alex began.

  “Who was not going to have it,” Clarissa added on.

  “And Selma swore she would never speak to Irene again,” Alex finished up.

  “And did she?” I asked, my eyes bouncing back and forth between the two of them.

  Alex and Clarissa shook their heads.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Alex offered.

  “Then why would Irene kill Selma after all these years?” Jaime asked.

  Alex shrugged. “I don’t know of a motive or anything. I just thought it was something to consider.”

  I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin as I thought over this new information. Finally, I reached for the pen and added Irene’s name to the suspect list.

  “Okay, I’m putting her on here, but her name doesn’t start with a ‘C’,” I pointed out.

  Alex smiled. “Well, there’s more to that story. See, growing up, Irene’s nickname was ‘Kitty’.”

  Chapter 12

  We decided that Jaime would go back over the coroner’s report to see if he had missed any clues. Alex would keep an eye on the townspeople who came into his store, looking in particular for any whose name started with a hard “C” sound. He didn’t seem too happy about it and kept muttering the “C” sound to himself.

  Clarissa and I decided to go talk to Corbyn the next day.

  A look of horror crossed Jaime’s face as soon as we mentioned it.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked. “No, wait. Let me rephrase that. That’s a terrible idea. What if he is the killer?”

  Clarissa scoffed. “Corbyn’s nearly ninety years old. I’m pretty sure Kat and I can take him.”

  Alex pursed his lips and shook his head. “But if he’s the killer, he pushed an old woman to her death, possibly on adrenalin alone. There’s no telling what he could do to you.”

  We decided to pay a surprise visit. To ease Alex and Jaime’s minds, we would stop by the grocery store to and from Corbyn’s new apartment.

  Jaime had checked the locks on the doors and windows of Aunt Selma’s house. I thought I would sleep better that night, but just before bedtime, I placed a call to Jared, telling him everything that had gone on.

  Jared pooh-poohed my idea of looking into Aunt Selma’s death. “Let the police take care of it, Kat. You’re not an investigative reporter anymore, you’re in marketing.”

  I bit back the response I wanted to make, which was something along the lines of “oh, yeah, and what are you?”

  Instead, the responsible part of me answered. “You might be right. I’ll try to watch from a distance.”

  “That makes much more sense,” he said, relief in his voice.

  A few minutes later, we said good night and clicked off. I stared at the cell phone in my hand. Did Jared not know me at all? Did he really think I was going to let this go?

  The next morning, I picked up Clarissa at her shop and we set out for Bowness, waving at Alex through his store window on our way. The two villages, one large and one small, tucked in right next to each other, making it difficult to see where one ended and the other began.

  If not for a small “Welcome to Bowness” sign on the side of a bridge, I would not have known we had essentially stepped into a new town.

  We found Corbyn’s new apartment a short distance from the lake. He didn’t answer when we banged on the door, so Clarissa went to the next apartment and knocked. A tiny, wrinkled woman opened the door and peered up through the chain.

  Clarissa pointed to Corbyn’s door. “Do you know where we might find the gentleman who lives there?”

  The woman turned, apparently to look at a clock, then looked back at Clarissa. “H
e walks most mornings by the lake.”

  Then she quickly closed the door before Clarissa could ask anything else, apparently not wanting to get involved in any sort of trouble.

  I glanced at my watch, then slid down the wall to sit. Clarissa gestured toward the lake. “Shouldn’t we go find him?”

  I motioned for her to join me. “He’s nearly ninety. He can’t be gone long.”

  Clarissa clearly saw the wisdom of my words, because she slid down the wall beside me. The apartment building looked fairly new and the hallway was well-lighted.

  “I’ve been wondering,” I said. “If Corbyn is his first name or his last name.”

  Clarissa shrugged. “Everyone has always called him Corbyn as long as I’ve known him, and I’ve been here twenty-four years.”

  I nodded as I mulled that over. I hated to think that someone beloved by Aunt Selma would hurt her, but we couldn’t afford to leave anyone off the suspect list at this point. At least, anyone who’s name started with that dratted “C.”

  We waited for only a few minutes when an elderly man turned the corner of the hallway toward us.

  “That’s him.” Clarissa pushed herself away from the wall.

  We scrambled to our feet as Corbyn approached.

  I dusted myself off as he walked slowly toward me.

  “Hello, Mr. Corbyn. I’m Kat McCoy, Selma’s niece.”

  He didn’t look surprised. “I heard you had arrived from the States. I probably should have rung you, but I suppose I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather since Selma passed.”

  “Hello, Clarissa,” he said in acknowledgement, then turned to me with a slight smile. “You’ve already hooked up with the local riffraff, eh?”

  Clarissa touched his arm affectionately. “Who else would be there looking after her?”

  Corbyn nodded as he stepped to the door and stuck in the key, pushing the door open. “Would you like to come in?”

  Would we like to come into the home of a possible killer? Clarissa and I exchanged a glance. Jaime wouldn’t like it, but we had to question Corbyn while we could.

  I planned to position myself so that he wouldn’t come between us and the door in case we needed to run for our lives.