Murder by Yew

by Suzanne Young

  She lifted the lantern from the hall table and held it before her as she walked slowly down the room, studying the floor. Drops of water led to the easel, where bigger splotches formed puddles in front of the wooden frame. One corner of the paper lying next to the easel was wet.

  “What are you doing?” Russell had come up beside her. “We need you to stand aside, Mrs. Davies.”

  She ignored him, frowning at the floor. “Why would there be water here but no mud?”

  He lifted his hat by the brim and scratched his head as he looked at the wet spots. “This confirms what Zeb and I were just talking about. Looks like whoever was here took off their shoes when they came in, so’s not to make any recognizable tracks. Either that, or sometimes they’ll tie plastic baggies over their shoes. Seen it done before. Only recognizable foot impressions we’ve found seem to be Mary’s, Hank’s or yours. Looks like someone saw this easel standin’ here and came over to see what it was. Water trail stops right here.”

  Grayson appeared behind his partner. “No signs of a break-in. Either the door was unlocked, or they had a key.”

  “I put the spare back when I came over this afternoon,” Mary announced to the room.

  Grayson frowned at her. “Spare?”

  “Yeah, the extra key. Edna keeps it in one of those hidey things that looks like a rock. It’s out behind the bench in the rock garden. Want me to show you?”

  Instead of answering, Grayson turned to Edna. “You keep a key out in the garden?”

  “Yes, but it’s well hidden.” She noticed the look that passed between the two men and felt her neck start to burn.

  “Who else knows about it?”

  “Only my cleaning women.”

  The sky was brighter by the time the uniformed officers finished their inquiries and checked to see that the spare key was, in fact, safely in its place in the imitation rock behind the wooden bench. Before leaving, Russell asked Edna if there was anyone she could stay with or someone who could move in for a few days until her husband got home.

  “She can stay with me,” Mary answered before Edna had a chance to reply.

  When Edna didn’t object, the man nodded. “We’ll see that your road is patrolled more often for the next few days, but I think whoever was here is long gone.” He tugged briefly on the brim of his hat and followed his partner out the door.

  Edna, still in her bathrobe and having put her soft-soled moccasins back on her feet, asked Mary to wait while she went upstairs to change. When she was ready, the little troop set off across the lawn, Mary and Hank leading the way with Edna closely behind, carrying Benjamin inside her belted raincoat. The cat, whose head showed beneath her chin, seemed to be the only one enjoying himself.

  Edna had never been inside Mary’s house before, and she liked what she saw. Built at the turn of the twentieth century, the rooms were large with low ceilings. The kitchen ran perpendicular to the dining room at the south end of the house. Against the outside wall of the dining room stood an immense stone fireplace in which Mary had just set a match to a small fire. In the corner beside the moss rock and all across the west wall were long, narrow, multi-paned windows. On a clear day, the room would have been bright and cheerful, but on this blustery morning, the storm obliterated the light and rattled the glass. Most of the brightness in the room came from eight candles in the middle of the cherry wood banquet table.

  A wide archway, the sides of which consisted of narrow, see-through shelves, separated the dining area from the kitchen. Looking at the appliances, white metal cupboards and stainless steel counter tops, Edna figured the room had last been renovated sometime in the nineteen fifties.

  Mary lit two Coleman lanterns, placing one near the stove and the other beside the sink, before setting a kettle and a frying pan on the gas burners to begin making breakfast. Edna, edgy from the night’s adventure and the lack of sleep, couldn’t sit still. Instead, she wandered toward the back door at the far end of the kitchen. Her flashlight picked out a set of narrow stairs leading to the floors above. Opposite the stairs, a short, wide window looked east over the tree-lined gravel drive. Inside, beneath the window sill, stood an old-fashioned radiator enclosed in a wooden frame, the top of which would be warm and cozy when the heat was on. A good place for bread loaves to rise, Edna thought. Now, atop this shelf, on an old towel-wrapped pillow, Benjamin had curled up for his morning nap. On a large, round dog’s bed in front of the heater lay Hank, head on his paws, watching Edna with tired, blinking eyes. Like the cat, he, too, would soon be asleep.

  “Come, pour yourself a cup of coffee,” Mary said, smiling. “Breakfast will be ready in a minute.”

  She looks as if she’s having fun, Edna thought, certain her neighbor didn’t often entertain company. The way Mary bustled around the kitchen, one would think she was catering a party.

  When she sat down at the dining room table, Edna noticed that two high school yearbooks had been pushed aside to make room for the place settings Mary laid out. The books were dated nineteen fifty-nine and nineteen sixty-two. She picked up the top volume, the older one. “Are these yours?”

  From the kitchen, Mary glanced over her shoulder while she buttered a slice of toast. “Nancy gave those to me when she brought Hank over. They belonged to Tom and Jenny. Nancy said she found them beside her father’s favorite chair and thought I might like to have them.”

  Edna remembered Tom telling her that Mary had been in the same class as his wife, Jenny. The book she was holding must be from his senior year. Putting it back, she said, “How’s Danny? Did you see him?”

  “Yes, he came with Nancy to drop Hank off.” Mary thought for several seconds before going on. “As to how he is, that’s hard to say. He was very quiet, but he’s never been a very talkative little guy.”

  “I wish Nancy had let him keep Hank,” Edna said and sighed. “It must be tough on Danny with both his grandfather and Hank gone.”

  “Yeah,” Mary agreed, setting a plate in front of Edna. “He’s been carrying a picture of Tom around with him. Nancy says he won’t let go of it. It’s one of those wallet-sized ones. Nancy said she finally had to put it in a plastic baggie, it was getting so soiled. Even when she sends him to his room to play, all he does is sit and stare at that picture.” Tears had brimmed in Mary’s eyes, and she turned to wipe them away, but not before Edna noticed.

  “Well, no wonder,” Edna hurriedly remarked to give Mary time to recover. “The poor little boy. He’s going through a lot right now. Do you know if Nancy plays with him or reads him stories?”

  Mary had picked up a platter filled with scrambled eggs, sausage patties and toast that she set in the middle of the table before sitting down opposite Edna. “Nancy probably doesn’t feel much like playing herself. She’s gone through a lot these last few years, what with her mother dying of cancer and now this.”

  Edna was reminded of Tom’s remark about how young Nancy had been when she married and became a mother. Falling silent, she slowly helped herself to the food as she thought of the young woman with a child to raise and no mother or father to help her. Nancy would have to grow up very quickly now, Edna thought, before her mind turned to an evening not so long ago, when she’d tried to talk to Nancy.

  Mary was quiet as they both began to eat, and Edna mentally worked over how she could word the request that was foremost in her mind. When she’d finished as much of the abundant breakfast as she could manage, Edna laid her napkin beside the plate. Trying to sound nonchalant, she said, “Do you suppose you could get Danny over here for a visit?”

  Mary looked at her, frowning.

  “I mean alone … without his mother?” The last words were posed as a question.

  “I’m not sure.” Mary’s eyes were filled with suspicion. “Nancy doesn’t let Danny out of her sight these days. I think she’s afraid her husband will kidnap him.”

  “Has Walt been around here?” Seeing the look on Mary’s face, Edna was relieved to move the subject away from Danny’s
visit. She knew what Mary hadn’t said but was probably thinking—that Tom’s daughter didn’t trust Edna with her son either.

  “Walt showed up at the house Saturday afternoon. He’d obviously been drinking. Nancy had to call the police. Apparently, she said she wasn’t going to let him in until he sobered up, and he tried to force his way in. When I spoke to her last night, she said he hadn’t been around since then, but I know as well as she that he’ll be back.”

  Determined to figure out a way soon to see Danny without his mother, Edna abstractedly nodded in sympathy at Mary’s pronouncement and reached for one of the yearbooks. “Tell me about Tom’s and your school days.”

  Fifteen

  “What do you want to know?” Mary said, rising to clear away the dishes.

  “What was he like as a boy? How did you two get to be friends?” Edna knew she was on a fishing expedition, but if she was to get to the reason for Tom’s murder, she had to know as much about him as possible. Perhaps somewhere there was a clue, if only she could find a thread.

  Just then, the long, florescent ceiling fixture in the kitchen came to life, filling the room with a glaring white light. “At last,” Mary said and leaned forward to blow out a candle.

  “Is the phone working?”

  Plucking the receiver off its cradle on her way to the kitchen, Mary shook her head. “Nothing yet.”

  Edna felt frustrated anew at not being able to contact Albert or Starling. She stood up and extinguished the remaining candles on the table, then helped clean up the dishes. When that was done, Mary suggested they have another cup of coffee in front of the fire.

  “It’ll be a while before those old radiators warm up the rest of the house. Besides, you wanted to know about Tom.” Sparks flew up the chimney as she added another log to the fire, then arranged chairs on either side of the hearth. Edna picked up Tom’s yearbook and sat down with it as Mary began talking about her school days.

  “I didn’t really know him until I was in ninth grade. That’s when Jenny came to our school. She and her parents moved here from Indiana that summer when her father got a job at the university.”

  Edna assumed the reference was to the University of Rhode Island in nearby Kingston. She didn’t interrupt but continued to leaf slowly through the book as Mary spoke, glancing up now and then to murmur something appropriate and show she was paying attention.

  “Other kids in school ignored Jenny at first. I don’t know if they didn’t like her because she was new or afraid to approach her because she was so pretty. She was tall, too. Tall as me,” Mary added with a self-conscious laugh. “She was the first girl I ever met that was even close to my height, but she was a lot better looking. I think we became friends because we could see each other over the heads of the other kids in class.”

  “When did she and Tom meet?”

  “I’m trying to remember exactly,” Mary said, pausing to stare into the fire. “It seems like he was always around, but I think maybe it was at the Thanksgiving pep rally. That was always our biggest event of the whole school year. Everybody went. Even Bobby used to go to those.”

  “Bobby?”

  “Yeah. Bobby O’Brien. He was Tom’s best friend. Bobby hardly ever went to stuff after school ‘cause he had to work. He and his father didn’t have much money.”

  Oh, boy, Edna thought, this is going to be a long story. “So, Tom and Jenny met at the rally?” She eased Mary back to the main subject.

  “Yeah. He really liked her, almost right from when they first saw each other. I could tell. That was okay with me, because we still hung out together, Jenny and I. Tom worked almost as much as Bobby. They both worked after school and on weekends to make extra money. Bobby was a mechanic at the garage in town, and Tom worked on old man Hoxie’s farm. It sorta made them outsiders at school, because they didn’t play sports or join clubs or do stuff like most of the rest of the boys did. But after Tom met Jenny, he and Bobby started sitting with us at lunch whenever they saw us in the cafeteria.”

  “Did Tom have any brothers or sisters?” Edna asked, looking up from the book where she’d found his formal senior picture. He had been a good-looking young man with an Elvis style pompadour, complete with the curl falling onto his forehead.

  “Yes. He had an older sister. She was married and had moved away before I got to know Tom, but he used to talk about her. I think she lives in Michigan. She has a son—Tom used to talk about his nephew a lot—but I don’t know if she had any other kids.”

  Edna didn’t think any of this was helping to discover who wanted Tom dead or why. She tried another tack. “Did he ever get into fights, that you know about? Did he have a temper?”

  “Tom?” Mary seemed surprised at the question. “Not Tom. Never. Tom was a gentle man, kind. Bobby was the one who got into fights. Tom usually broke ‘em up. Bobby was big, but Tom was bigger—stronger too. I guess you have to be pretty strong to throw hay bales around,” she said and grinned. “I don’t know why Bobby never resented Tom pulling him off of other guys, but he never did. They stayed good friends all through their senior year.”

  Edna turned a few pages in the yearbook and found Bobby’s class picture. Robert P. O’Brien, coolest car, read the caption. He was a handsome boy with curly dark hair. Even in the black-and-white photo, she could see the twinkle in his eyes and the mischief in his smile. He and Tom could probably have passed for brothers, she thought.

  “So Bobby was a fighter?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Mary rolled her eyes. “Boy, did he have a temper. I heard someone say once that Bobby was like a stick of dynamite with a short fuse. I think the other kids teased him just to see him get mad.”

  “What did they tease him about?”

  “His father, mostly. Bobby’s dad was an alcoholic. Most of the time, he was in some bar instead of working. That’s why Bobby had to work. Jenny told me once that Bobby’s old man would beat Bobby when he got drunk. Maybe that’s why Bobby hit other kids. Maybe it was because he couldn’t hit his father.” Mary looked quizzically at Edna, as if Edna could affirm her belief.

  “What about his mother?” Edna asked. “Couldn’t she stop Bobby’s father from beating him?”

  “She died when Bobby was born. There was only the two of them, Bobby and his father.”

  Edna felt like she was getting off the track, but she had a growing suspicion that Tom’s friend might somehow be significant. “You said Bobby worked as a mechanic?”

  “Yeah, at Kiley’s gas station in town.” Then Mary’s face brightened and her eyes glowed. “He had a neat car, a baby blue Chevy convertible. You know, one of those with the big fins and chrome rocker panels. Nineteen fifty-seven, I think it was. It was the greatest. I got to ride in it a few times. Hardly anybody else at school did, except for Tom and Jenny and me.”

  Edna smiled at Mary’s excitement over the memory. That must have been one of the best years of Mary’s young life, Edna thought, remembering that it must have been only two or three years later that Mary’s father had suffered his stroke. Her curiosity growing, Edna asked, “Does Bobby still live around here?”

  “No,” Mary replied. “He ran away. As a matter of fact, it was just after he and Tom graduated from high school that year.”

  “Ran away?” Edna sensed a change in Mary’s mood, a sudden reluctance to talk about her old classmates. “Why? Was he in some sort of trouble?”

  Mary played with her fingers, refusing to meet Edna’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I promised Jenny and Tom I would never tell anyone, ever.”

  “But Jenny and Tom are dead,” Edna protested. “What difference does it make now? Besides, we’re talking about something that happened forty years ago, aren’t we?” Sensing the first bit of intrigue surrounding someone in Tom’s life, Edna didn’t want Mary to clam up now. What if this were the thread she was looking for, the one to lead her to Tom’s killer?

  Mary stared into the fire for a long time before answering. “Maybe you’re
right.” Still, she hesitated before going on. “Bobby ran off with one of the girls in my class. Her name was Daisy Farwell. She was only fifteen.”

  “So she was underage. Did her parents go after them?”

  Mary shook her head, still showing a reluctance to speak. “Daisy’s mother died just before graduation that year. Nobody ever knew Mr. Farwell, as far as I know.”

  “Didn’t Daisy have other relatives?”

  “Not that I ever knew about. There was just her and her mother. Just like there was only Bobby and his father. Maybe that’s what drew them together.”

  “If there was nobody to object, why the big secret? Why did you promise not to ever talk about it?”

  “Nobody knew that Bobby and Daisy left together. Nobody but Tom and Jenny. I heard it from Jenny that Bobby and Daisy got married and drove off for California in that baby blue Chevy convertible.” Mary’s eyes took on a faraway look, as if remembering her own rides in her school friend’s “neat car.”

  “But why the secret, if there was nobody around to object?” Edna persisted, causing Mary’s smile to fade and her attention to return to Edna’s question.

  “My father probably would have tried to stop them—and some of the other men in town. You know, the pillars of the community. They’d wanted to find a foster home for Daisy, since she was still so young. I heard Father talking on the phone to one of his friends about her, heard him say he thought Mr. Henry ought to adopt her.”

  Edna’s heart went out to a fifteen-year-old she would never know. The girl must have felt very alone after losing her mother. Edna wondered why the young teen had run away rather than live with one of the local families. “Did you say Jenny told you about Bobby and Daisy getting married? How did she know?”