The Corpse at the End of the Chapter

by Karen Hayes

  Monica felt Copper’s frustration. When you’re used to knowing practically everything that’s going on in your small town, it’s difficult to realize that something is going on but you don’t know what it is. “Why don’t you call the sheriff on his cell?” she asked.

  “No, no, I don’t want to bother him. I’m sure he’s busy.” Copper had told Monica, without going into any details, that Sheriff Blodgett was planning to question the other customers who had been in the shop Friday morning, but had left before Old Mrs. Lafferty’s body had been found. “He might have no idea what the ambulance came for,” she said.

  Copper went to the rain-drenched window and looked through the watery blur across at the sheriff’s office. The lights were on and she could see Toby Belt leaning back in his chair, his feet up on the desk, reading a magazine, probably the Field and Stream he had bought on Saturday.

  “Monica, I’m just going to run across the street for a minute,” she said.

  “But Ms. Penny, it’s pouring down rain out there. I think it’s even worse than Friday.”

  Copper picked up an umbrella from the stand by the door. “I’ll take this. I’ll be fine.” She opened the umbrella as she rushed out the door. Monica was right. The downpour was worse than it had been Friday, and splashes of mud mottled the light gray of her wool slacks. There being no traffic to impede her dash, she was across the street and inside the sheriff’s office in moments.

  Toby looked up in surprise as Copper came through the door, shaking her umbrella out behind her. “Little wet for a visit, isn’t it, Copper? You could just have called. The phones aren’t out or anything. ”

  “Yes, Toby, but I just couldn’t take it any longer. Harve said he was going to have Ruby Stone come in for questioning first thing this morning. But he went out nearly two hours ago and hasn’t come back. Then there was the ambulance. Well, I’d just like to know what’s going on.”

  “Police business, Copper,” Toby said. “Can’t discuss it.”

  “Now, Toby, the sheriff and I have been discussing this case together. If there have been any developments, he’d want me to know.”

  “Then he will tell you. When he’s ready.”

  As Copper sighed in exasperation, the phone rang. “Sheriff’s office, Deputy Belt speaking.” He listened for a moment, then handed the phone to Copper. “It’s the sheriff. For you.”

  The color drained from Copper’s face as she listened to what Harve was telling her. “I’ll be right there,” she said and handed the phone back to Toby. Grabbing her umbrella, she once more dashed across the street.

  “Think you’ll be okay by yourself for a while?” she asked Monica.

  “Sure, Ms. P., but...”

  “I’ll explain later. I think my keys are in that drawer.”

  Monica opened the drawer and handed Copper her keys. Copper ran out the back way, to where her car was parked and, wheels squealing on the wet pavement, sped on her way to Ruby Stone’s apartment. The ambulance passed her going the other way, but she was too concentrated on driving through the swiftly- running stream that was the road to Ruby’s place to return Ryan’s wave.

  She didn’t even bother with her umbrella as she ran out of the car and up the stairs to Ruby’s second-floor apartment. Ruby wasn’t there, of course. Her stabbed and bloody body was in the back of the ambulance, headed for the hospital morgue. But there were other things in Ruby’s apartment that Harve Blodgett wanted Copper to see.

  Copper was a bit out of breath as she pushed open the door and entered the apartment.

  “You didn’t have to give yourself a heart attack getting here, Copper,” Harve said. “This stuff ain’t goin’ anywhere.” He gestured behind him. “I called Ruby this morning to have her come in. No answer. I called the Rainy Day and she wasn’t there. So I drove over here. Door was open. Ruby was dead, stabbed.”

  Copper looked around at the tiny tidy apartment. That was a surprise. She never would have expected an alcoholic like Ruby to be such an immaculate housekeeper. She walked over to the fireplace, where a number of framed pictures graced the mantle. They appeared to be all of the same person, but at different ages, from infant to toddler through teen years and young adult. Copper looked questioningly at Sheriff Blodgett.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” he told her. “I’m assuming it’s the child she had. You’ll notice none of the pictures are posed and a lot were taken from a distance, then blown up.”

  “How can you tell that, Harve?” Copper asked, picking up one of the pictures, of a girl around eight years old, at the top of a slide ready to swish down. Ruby had put it in a heart-shaped silver frame.

  “See how it seems just a bit out of focus?” Harve told her. “Photos lose sharpness as they’re enlarged. This wasn’t a case of Ruby jiggling the camera. She was probably taking it from a distant hiding pace, then had it blown up.”

  “My, I didn’t know you knew that much about photography, Harve,” Copper said.

  “Well, I really don’t,” Harve confessed. “It was Ryan who pointed that out. Photography is one of his hobbies.”

  Copper nodded. “So it looks like Ruby found out who had adopted her baby and kept track of her through the years.”

  She put the picture back on the mantle and picked up another one, this time of Ruby’s supposed daughter as an adult. She looked at it curiously. “Harve, I realize this picture is not really sharp, but I think I know this young woman. At least I’ve seen her some- where before–and recently.”

  “Uh huh,” Harve said. “Take a look at the next picture.”

  This one was a little sharper, and the young woman instantly recognizable. She was dressed in the uniform of a paramedic, standing outside an ambulance.

  “It’s the woman who came with Ryan on Friday to pick up Agatha’s body!” Copper exclaimed. “I think her name’s Cindy.”

  “Precisely. Cindy Doyle. Fortunately, she did not come with Ryan today. I think this, uh, display would have unnerved her just a bit.”

  “Yes, I should think so. Why didn’t she come with Ryan today?”

  “She’s in Portland. Her dad had a heart attack Saturday morning.”

  Copper examined the picture more closely. In the background was Brandon Lafferty’s clinic, so Ryan and Cindy were probably there to transport one of Brandon’s patients to the hospital. After looking at the image of the young woman for a while, she went back to some of the other photos on the mantle. Shaking her head in almost disbelief, she turned back to the sheriff. “Did you look closely at these pictures, Harve?”

  “Yeah. Brandon Lafferty is for sure Cindy’s daddy.”

  “Do you think she knows?”

  Harve said that Ryan didn’t think Cindy even knew she was adopted, but he could be wrong. After seeing these pictures and the others, Ryan had put two and two together himself. But he had promised he wouldn’t tell Cindy.

  “The others?”

  Harve nodded his head in the direction of the bedroom. Copper followed him in. This was obviously where Ruby had died, as the comforter on her bed was covered in blood. But that was not what captured Copper’s attention. Every inch of wall space was plastered with pictures of Brandon Lafferty. There were pictures of Brandon as a teenager playing for the school basketball team, Brandon in cap and gown at graduation, Brandon and an unknown woman (her face was X’d out of the picture) in front of a restaurant in Portland, Brandon at the Health and Science University in Portland, where he had obtained his medical degree, Brandon and Louise at their wedding, with Louise’s face cut out and Ruby’s pasted in. The mirror on her vanity was surrounded by pictures of Brandon copied from yearbooks, torn from newspapers.

  “Well, it may have been a brief affair for Brandon, but it appears to have been a long-term obsession for Ruby,” Copper mused.

  “Yeah, looks like she had a thing for him ever since girls start having things for boys.”

  “So,” said Copper, “I’m guessing Ruby didn’t kill Agatha, but maybe who
ever did also killed Ruby.”

  “I think you’re right. And I’ve got my work cut out for me, ’cause I have no idea who did it.”

  “We still have two suspects on our list,” Copper reminded him. “Louise and Ron.”

  “Louise is definitely on the list,” Harve confirmed, “but I’m not so sure about Ron. He’s not even from here.”

  “That’s exactly why you need to check him out. Louise isn’t from here either, remember?”

  Harve rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll see what I can find out on him. And I’ll question him, anyway, since he was there in your store Friday morning. Same with Louise. You know anything about Ron?”

  “Not really. He’s just been here a couple of years.” Copper recalled meeting Ron Parker when he and some friends had come through on a back-packing trip a few summers earlier. Ron had fallen in love with the place and a few months later he had come back, saying he had dropped out of college, and found a job with the fire department. She had no idea where he was from originally.

  “Well, I’ll talk to him. Just so I can cross him off the list. Louise is looking pretty good to me right now. She found out about Ruby having Brandon’s child and killed her out of jealousy. In all the years they’ve been married, she hasn’t given Brandon a child.”

  “But why would she kill Agatha?”

  “I’ll need to think a bit on that one. I always thought those two got on pretty well. Is Louise from Portland?”

  “No, she’s from Astoria, but she met Brandon in Portland. She was a student at Reed when I was, just three years or so younger. I actually introduced them. I thought she would be s good influence on Brandom.”

  “You went to Reed? Did you do drugs, Copper?”

  “No, Harve. Contrary to what some people think, not everyone at Reed experiments with drugs. As far as I know, Louise didn’t, either. It’s a very good school, academically, you know. Many of us were just there to learn.”

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  “I’m just going to ignore that, Harve. Now, I wonder, does Brandon have any idea that Cindy is his daughter? I mean, he must know her, since she’s Ryan’s ambulance partner. But has he ever really looked at her? The resemblance is uncanny. We could be looking at Brandon as our killer.”

  “Not if he wasn’t in the Book Nook when Agatha was killed.”

  “True. Well, we’ve a lot to think about. And I’ve got to get back to the shop so Monica can go to lunch. Keep me in the loop, please, Harve.”

  “Will do. Right now, I think I’m going to have a little chat with our good doctor. He should know about this.” He gestured to the photos bedecking the apartment.

  “And will you tell him about Cindy?”

  Harve nodded. “If he doesn’t already know.”

  “Just be careful, Harve. There’s a cold-blooded murderer out there. And murderers can kill cops, too.”

  SEVEN

  MONICA WANTED TO HEAR ALL ABOUT WHATEVER was happening when Copper returned to the Book Nook. But there were customers there and Copper didn’t want to be overheard, so she whisked her assistant off to lunch.

  “Later,” she said.

  The rain had let up, but Monica grabbed an umbrella anyway as she ran down the street to the car repair shop where Trevor was polishing his bright red Harley to a mirror finish. He looked at his watch and raised his eyebrows.

  “Copper had to go somewhere and just got back,” Monica told him by way of apology.

  Wordlessly, Trevor handed her a helmet, put his on and got on the motorcycle. Monica barely had time to get on behind him before the freshly polished Harley was off and kicking up mud as it sped on down the road to the Cabot Lodge and Café.

  * * *

  Copper, at the Book Nook, was fielding questions from customers that she didn’t know how to answer. Everyone wanted to know who the suspects were, did the sheriff have anyone in custody, where was the ambulance going as it roared by, when was Old Mrs. Lafferty’s funeral going to be. Not even reminding them that this was a bookstore, not gossip central stopped the questions.

  “But Copper, you must know something,” Marian protested. “After all, Old Mrs. Lafferty was murdered right here in your bookstore.”

  “Yes, and the only way I would know who killed her would be if I had done it myself. And I didn’t. Sheriff Blodgett is doing his best to solve this crime. Right now he’s out interviewing people who were in the store earlier, but had already gone by the time Lucy found Agatha’s body.”

  “Does he think one of them did it? Who are they?” Dinty Moore asked. “I’ve just been across the street. The sheriff’s not there and Toby won’t tell me a thing.”

  “I don’t think...look, people, I don’t know who killed Agatha any more than you do. As for Sheriff Blodgett’s suspicions, well, you’ll just have to ask him about that.”

  But of course they couldn’t ask the sheriff because, as Dinty had already discovered, he wasn’t in his office. He was, at that moment, in Dr. Lafferty’s clinic, reading a six-month old copy of Sports Illustrated, waiting for the doctor to finish with his patient. Tiffany, Dr. Lafferty’s receptionist, told him this was the doctor’s last patient of the day, then he would be leaving for Pleasant View to make arrangements for his mother’s funeral.

  “I won’t take much of his time,” the sheriff assured her. “But it is important.”

  He got to his feet a few minutes later when the patient came out, said good-bye to Tiffany and left, and Brandon Lafferty came into the clinic’s lobby.

  “Sheriff,” he said, “what can I do for you today? You been eating too much of Marcia Cabot’s meatloaf? Or Eve’s pastries?”

  “No, this is official business, Doc. I need you to come with me for a while. I’ll bring you back here later. I know you want to get your mother’s funeral planned.”

  “Come with you? Where?”

  “You’ll see when we get there.”

  “Sheriff, are you arresting me for something?”

  The sheriff laughed. “No, no, of course not. I just need to show you something.”

  Confused but curious, the doctor followed Harve to his police car and climbed in the passenger seat. “You aren’t going to tell me where we’re going?” he asked.

  Harve shook his head. “It’s not far.” He pulled up in front of Ruby Stone’s apartment building. “We’re here,” he said, getting out of the car.

  Brandon followed suit, shaking his head. “I know a couple of my patients live here. Is something wrong with one of them?”

  “Not that I know of.” Harve climbed the stairs. Brandon followed him and when they got to the top he noticed the yellow crime scene tape in front of one of the apartments.

  “Sheriff, can you please fill me in on what’s going on? Isn’t that Ruby Stone apartment?”

  Harve just nodded.

  “And her apartment is a crime scene?”

  Harve nodded again. “Ruby’s dead, Doc. Someone killed her.”

  Dr. Lafferty stopped in his tracks. “Ohmigod, Harve! That’s terrible. Who…? Look, Sheriff, you surely don’t think I did it? Do you?”

  The sheriff carefully pulled back the crime scene tape and, pulling a key from his pocket, unlocked the apartment door. He turned to Brandon. “No, Dr. Lafferty, I don’t think you did it. In fact, I’m fairly confident you didn’t. I think the same person killed Ruby that killed your mother. But there are things in this apartment that you need to know about. However, before we go in, I want your word that everything you see here will be kept strictly confidential. You are not to tell anyone about what I’m going to show you. You may share it with our wife, if you are so inclined, but no one else.”

  “Of course, of course. You have my word.” In his curiosity, Brandon Lafferty would have agreed to anything at that moment.

  Sheriff Blodgett led the doctor through the living room and into Ruby’s bedroom. Lafferty was at a loss for words as he stared at the walls covered with pictures of him. He stood in the center of the room and s
lowly turned, his gaze taking in pictures of himself at various ages throughout his life, from early teens to the present. He didn’t even notice the bare, bloodstained mattress (the sheriff having removed the bedclothes as evidence). He only saw the pictures, the evidence of Ruby’s obsession.

  “I don’t believe this!” he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “I barely knew the woman.”

  “Oh, I think you knew her well enough,” the sheriff said and gestured for Lafferty to follow him back into the living room. He pointed to the pictures on the mantle. “Recognize this person?”

  Doctor Lafferty moved to the mantle and picked up the picture of the young woman in uniform, standing in front of an ambu- lance. “That’s Cindy Doyle.”

  “Yes.” Harve swept his hand along the mantle full of pictures. “These are, I believe, all Cindy Doyle.”

  Lafferty frowned as he looked at the other pictures. “I don’t understand, Sheriff. What are you trying to tell me?”

  The sheriff pointed to the picture the doctor was holding. “Look carefully at this picture, Doc. Look carefully at Cindy’s features. Don’t they look very familiar to you?”

  “Of course they look familiar. I’ve seen Cindy dozens of times.”

  “Look a little more carefully, Doctor Lafferty. Look at Cindy, then look at yourself in the mirror.”

  “Are you saying...?” Lafferty squinted at Cindy Dole’s picture. His face blanched. “Sheriff, is Cindy Doyle Ruby’s illegitimate child?”