The Corpse at the End of the Chapter

by Karen Hayes

  “And yours, too, I think, Doc. I’ll bet if we compared her DNA with yours, we’d find that. Of course, way back then, we didn’t have the technological advantages we have now. Ruby had no way of proving you were the father of her child.”

  “But...but this is impossible. I was only with the girl once. Just once, Sheriff.”

  “All it takes is once, Doc.”

  Lafferty sank down onto the couch and buried his head in his hands. “I don’t know, Sheriff. I just don’t know. This is all rather overwhelming. I had no idea Ruby’d gotten pregnant after that one time. I didn’t know she’d had a baby.”

  “But she did accuse you of being that child’s father. She followed you to Portland, remember? And when you wouldn’t listen to her, she assaulted you. Or so you claimed in the court case that followed.”

  Brandon looked up. “So you know about that.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Stuff’s easy to find out these days, what with the internet and all. It’s pretty hard to keep secrets anymore.”

  “She was the one that came on to me, Harve. I did not, I repeat, I did not seduce her. She was working with my mother in the library that summer. I came home for just a few days–I can’t even remember why. I was working in Portland at the time, so there must have been a good reason for me to take a few days off. But that was a long time ago and I don’t remember. Oh, yes, I do. It was my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Anyway, Ruby flirted with me outrageously. And, hey, I’m a normal male. Ruby was pretty then, beautiful, even, in spite of her second-hand clothes and no makeup. My ego was flattered. And I let her seduce me. And it was just once—just once in a moment of weakness. Then I went back to Portland. When she showed up a few months later claiming she was pregnant, I thought she was just trying to con me.”

  Lafferty leaned back in his seat and gave a heavy sigh. Harve looked at him with just a twinge of jealousy. At forty, he’d already started developing a paunch that overhung his belt. At fifty plus, Brandon Lafferty was still as trim and handsome as he’d been as a young medical student who’d come home one summer and spent a fateful few hours with a young girl who’d adored him for years. Harve shook his head. Some guys have all the luck. Well, maybe it wasn’t all good luck.

  “Let me see if I have this straight, Sheriff,” Lafferty said. “Somehow you are assuming that my mother’s murder and Ruby’s murder are connected, and those murders have something to do with Cindy Doyle.”

  “That’s my thinking at the moment.”

  “So does Cindy know anything about all this?” He waved his hand towards to pictures.

  Harve shook his head and said he was sure Cindy was an innocent, although she was bound to find out before the case was over. He felt sorry for the young woman, and for Brandon Lafferty. Even though he wasn’t sure the doctor was telling the truth about Ruby seducing him, it had to be pretty traumatic to all of a sudden find out you were the father of a twenty-six-year-old woman who lived just one town over. But there was something else he needed to ask Lafferty.

  “What was your wife’s relationship with your mother?”

  “My wife? Now, look, Sheriff, don’t go accusing my wife of anything. She and my mother got along very well. Before my father died, we all lived together in the same house and all got along just fine. I fact, recently, Louise and I had been trying to talk my mother into moving back in with us. It’s a big house, she was getting old—no sense in her paying rent on an apartment when there’s plenty of room here. Anyway, the whole mess with Ruby was over and done with long before I married Louise. She knows nothing about it. Please, don’t tell her about this. I have a good marriage. I want it to stay that way.”

  “Dr. Lafferty, this is a murder case. When the killer is caught, if he or she confesses and there doesn’t need to be a trial, then of course, all of this needn’t come out. But I can make no guarantees. My advice to you is to confess the whole thing to your wife. After all, as you said, it was over and done with before you married her. If you really do have a good marriage, I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  Brandon ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “You’re probably right. Better that she hear it from me than read it in Dinty Moore’s newspaper. I’ll guess I’ll need to find a way to break it to her.”

  “Speaking of Dinty, I’m sure he’ll want to know as soon as possible when Agatha’s funeral will be. So let me get you back to your office so you can get those arrangements taken care of. I take it the medical examiner’s office has released her body?”

  “By Wednesday, they told me,” the doctor said. “We’ll have the funeral Thursday, I think. I…Sheriff, my mother’s death was a real shock. And now you’ve given me another shock—two more shocks, really. Ruby’s death and the fact that I have a daughter. I hope you get these murders solved quickly, because as soon as the killer is behind bars, I’m taking a vacation. This has all been just too much.”

  * * *

  Sheriff Blodgett’s next stop after dropping Dr. Lafferty back at the clinic was the fire station. Most of the local firefighters were volunteers, but the town felt it should have one paid employee on its fire department staff, and for the past two years that one paid employee was Ron Parker. Ron lived in an apartment above the station and could receive immediate notification anytime there was a fire and call in the necessary volunteers to respond. Fires in Misty Valley weren’t common, but they did happen, and there were even occasional forest fires in the summer. Fortunately, they rarely had any really big ones that required evacuation, except for the year they had that really hot summer, the year Ruby Stone’s parents had refused to leave and had died. Ron was also a certified Emergency Medical Technician, which was handy in an emer-gency, since Ryan and Cindy, the county’s paramedics, were miles away in Pleasant View.

  Ron was under the hood of the fire engine, tinkering with something, when the sheriff came in.

  “Didn’t know you were a mechanic, Mr. Parker,” the sheriff said.

  Ron laughed. “I’m really not, Sheriff,” he said, “but I drove around the block this morning and the engine seemed to be running a little rough, so I thought I’d just do a minor adjustment.” He closed the hood and wiped his hands on a cloth that was sitting on the bumper. “So what can I do for you? An emergency some-where?”

  “No, I’m just talking to people that were at the Book Nook Friday morning but left before Agatha Lafferty’s body was found.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. Terrible thing to happen. Any leads yet?”

  “No. It’s still an open investigation. So, Ron...” the sheriff asked, looking around for a place to sit, “is there somewhere we could have a little chat?”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind the climb. Don’t know what I can tell you, though. Like you said, I was gone before the body was discovered.” He led the sheriff to the back of the fire engine garage, where a narrow metal staircase ascended to the small apartment above. Harve wondered for a minute of those fragile-looking stairs would hold him, but they did.

  “It’s not much, but it’s home,” Ron said and indicated the small sofa as a place for the sheriff to sit. “Can you get you anything? Coffee, a Coke, beer?”

  “No beer. I’m on duty. A Coke would be fine.”

  Ron pulled two cans from the small fridge—a Coke for the sheriff, a beer for himself. “If you have no objection,” he said. “I’m sort of always on duty, but not exactly, if you know what I mean.”

  “It’s fine,” Harve told him and pulled the tab on his Coke. “I don’t know you very well, Ron, so suppose we start with you telling me a little about yourself. Where you’re from, what your background is, why you came to Misty Valley.”

  “Am I a suspect, Sheriff?”

  “Son, at this point in the investigation, when you don’t really have any suspects, everyone in town is a suspect. Know what I mean?”

  “Got ya.” Ron was from Astoria, he said, which was also where Louise Lafferty was from. In fact, Louise and Ron’s mother had been
good friends growing up. It was Louise who had helped him get the job here in Misty Valley. He’d been going to nursing school at the University of Portland, but wasn’t really into nursing that much. When he’d been backpacking through the mountains a few summers ago with some friends, he’d come through Misty Valley and really liked the place. He ran into Louise and she told him he might be able to get a job with the fire department if he got his EMT certification. So he went back to Portland, dropped out of nursing school and signed up for an EMT course. As soon as he was certified, he came back to Misty Valley and Louise and her husband prevailed upon the town council to hire him, citing his EMT training as valuable to the town. And that was about it.

  He really liked it here in the mountains and even had a girlfriend in the next town over. Well, not a girlfriend, really, he clarified, just a friend who happened to be a girl. It wasn’t a romance. They had a movie theater in Pleasant View, so he would go over there on the weekends and he and this friend would go to dinner and see whatever movie was playing, then spend some time talking. Right now there was just one theater, though they tried to have a different film playing each week. But they were thinking of putting in a multiplex, which would make for more variety. The friend’s name was Cindy Doyle.

  Cindy Doyle! This case was getting more complicated by the minute, Sheriff Blodgett thought.

  Ron Parker was a nice-looking kid, although the sheriff would have had him cut his hair, which was, in Harve’s opinion, a little long and a little shaggy. He had to admit, though, that he liked the boy’s moustache and that little beard he had grown after he’d moved to Misty Valley. Gave him a bit of a rakish look–if only he’d cut that hair.

  “So tell me about Friday morning when you went to the Book Nook,” he asked Ron.

  “Well,” the young man said, “I don’t know what I can tell you. I went there for the grand opening. I had met Mrs. Penny when I came through here the first time and thought she was a really nice lady. And I like to read–not much else to do when you’re cooped up in a fire station all day. Daytime TV leaves a lot to be desired. So I thought I’d go see what she had and maybe buy a book–which I did.” He pointed to a book sitting on is kitchen table. “Almost finished it already–it’s a real page turner.”

  “So, do you buy all the books you read, or do you use the library?”

  “I buy some. And I’ve got a Kindle, so I can download books onto it. Don’t take up as much space that way. And space is something I don’t have a lot of.” He grinned. “I’ve tried to use the library a few times, but that old librarian was never very friendly. To get a library card, I had to give her my life story and a list of my ancestors back to William the Conqueror signed in blood and the promise of my first child if I ever forgot to return a book, that kind of thing. She’s the one who was killed, right, Old Mrs. Lafferty?”

  “Right. So how long were you in the bookstore?” Harve took a sip of his Coke. He could smell Ron’s beer and wished he weren’t on duty.

  “Not long. I said hello to Mrs. Penny, looked around a bit, nibbled on a piece of shrimp that was wrapped in bacon–-boy, was that good—and some kind of a pastry thingee. I tried to flirt a little with Monica What’s-her-name that was at the cash register, but she’s kind of a cold fish.”

  “If you knew her boyfriend, you’d know why Monica did not flirt back,” the sheriff told him.

  “Oh, yeah, she dates that motorcycle dude, doesn’t she?”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll remember that. Anyway, I saw this book I’d been wanting to read, so bought it and left, and that’s about it.”

  “How long did you browse through the books before you found the book you wanted.”

  “Oh, I didn’t really browse at all. Mrs. Penny had a table set up right as you walked into the store with a display of current best-sellers. The book I wanted was right there, front and center. She was giving ten percent off those best-sellers, too, so that made it a good deal.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual while you were in the store?”

  “No, Sheriff. Sorry. The only people I even talked to were Mrs. Penny and Monica. I couldn’t even tell you who else was there, really.”

  “Thanks, Ron. If you think of anything, give me a call.”

  “Sure, Sheriff.”

  At the stairs, the sheriff turned back for a moment. “Oh, by the way, Ron, do you know Ruby Stone?”

  Ron hesitated for just a minute. “Ruby Stone? I don’t think...no, wait, isn’t she the bartender at the Rainy Day?”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t go there much, but I’ve seen her the few times I have. Why? Is she a suspect?”

  “Like I said, at his point, I suspect everyone.”

  “Well, I usually stick to beer, but I understand she makes a pretty mean drink. I watched her throwing those bottles around one time. That was fun.”

  The sheriff maneuvered his way down the narrow metal steps and out of the fire station. The next person he had to talk to was Louise Lafferty, and he thought he’d wait until her husband had a chance to talk to her about Ruby and Cindy. No, come to think of it, it might be awhile before Brandon got up the courage to tell his wife that the pretty ambulance paramedic in Pleasant View was his daughter.

  Brandon had indicated he was driving to the mortuary in Pleasant View to arrange for his mother’s funeral, so that meant Louise should be home alone. Heading his car in the direction of the Lafferty home, Harve thought carefully about how to approach the woman. He didn’t want to ‘spill the beans,’ so to speak, so would say nothing about Brandon’s relationship with Ruby Stone, the child that had come from that relationship, or about Ruby’s death. He would just ask her about what she may have noticed in the Book Nook Friday.

  As it happened, Louise wasn’t home, so the interview would have to be deferred anyway. Perhaps Louise had gone to Pleasant View with her husband. After all, she had been close to her mother-in-law. Or had she? Lots of women had problems with their mother-in-law. And Louise had been in the bookstore shortly before Agatha’s body had been found. Louise Lafferty was definitely staying on the list. So was Ron Parker, although he didn’t know why. Threw a just something about that young man.

  EIGHT

  BRANDON LAFFERTY WAS NOT IN A GOOD MOOD. He had planned to drive to Pleasant View alone. He needed time to think. Sheriff Blodgett’s revelations that morning had not been easy to take. But Louise had insisted on accompanying him, saying she would be better able to select an appropriate coffin. Brandon, she felt, did not have the best taste. And she was right, of course. So here he was, trying to navigate the winding mountain road, part of him listening to Louise and part of him mulling over how he was going to tell her about Ruby—and about Cindy.

  The murder of his mother had been hard on Brandon. It hadn’t been easy on Louise, either. She and Agatha had been pretty good friends. But Louise knew something about funerals. She had helped her mother plan the funerals of both her maternal grand-parents. And she herself had planned her mother’s funeral. Her father had been totally useless with grief at the time. So she felt she could help make the correct decisions about Agatha’s funeral without falling apart. She mentioned some of her ideas to Brandon, but he just responded in grunts and ‘uh huhs.’

  Brandon’s mind was far from his mother’s funeral. He just wanted to figure out when and where he going to reveal his past indiscretion. He was sure his wife would understand about Ruby —that had happened several years before he married Louise. Louise herself had not been a virgin when they met, and she certainly had not shared with him the names of every man she’d slept with. And it had, after all, just been once with Ruby, just once. But what about Cindy? He and Louise had been married more than twenty childless years, although they had certainly tried to have children. Fertility treatments, in vitro, nothing had worked. What would Louise think when she learned that her husband had a twenty-six-year-old daughter by another woman? A woman who had just been murdered. Could her
tell her that? He supposed that would not remain a secret for long. What the sheriff had sworn him to secrecy about was not Ruby’s death, but the interior decorating she had done in her bedroom. And he had said Brandon could share that with his wife. But, no, he would definitely keep that secret. No need for Louise to know that Ruby was still obsessed with him after so many years.

  “So can we?” he heard his wife ask. Her voice brought his mind back to the present.

  “Can we what, dear?”

  “Have dinner at that new French restaurant. I understand their food is very good.”

  “They have a French restaurant in Pleasant View?”

  “Brandon Lafferty, you have not heard one word I’ve been saying!”

  “I’m sorry dear. I just have a lot on my mind right now. What were you telling me about this restaurant?”

  “Celine Webb’s boy went off to culinary school, then decided to come back home and open his own restaurant so residents of the area could have a place to eat really good gourmet food. And tourists could go home and tell their friends that you could get a great meal in middle-of-nowhere Oregon.”

  “Oh. How nice of Celine Webb’s boy. Sure. Of course we can eat there. It shouldn’t take too long to plan mother’s funeral.”

  He pulled up in front of the Peace Mortuary. The only mortuary in the county, it was located right in front of the only cemetery in the county. But, then, it was a very small county. People had been buried there for many years and there was still plenty of room. It was not called the Peace Mortuary because it was assumed its residents would find eternal peace there, but because the owners were the Peace family. Twins Roger and Reggie Peace were the current owners and proprietors. Brandon hoped it would be Roger they met with. Reggie was rather too fawning and solicitous. Roger was more matter-of-fact and to the point.