Aspen Allegations - A Sutton Massachusetts Mystery

by Kasi Blake

Chapter 9

  I drew in a long, deep breath, basking in the golden sunshine which streamed down from a cloud-studded blue sky. Snow still melted at the edges of the Pleasant Valley Country Club’s elegantly landscaped parking lot, but the white crystals had softened into a slushy, crunchy snow which would soon be gone. The nor’easter of two days ago was all but erased from memory.

  We made our way up the long wooden stairs which led from the lower parking lot to the building proper, settled on the top of a hill like a manor house. A circular drive swept around before the main entrance, and I could almost imagine PGA legends being dropped off by their limousines, anxious attendants running to pull open the shining black doors, friendly faces ushering the talented sportsmen inside.

  Jason’s voice came from behind me. “Have you ever played golf?”

  I gave a noncommittal shrug. “I have a set of clubs in the basement,” I admitted, “and tried lessons a few times. But they never took.”

  “Were you personally interested in the game, or were you taking it up for some other reason?”

  “Another reason,” I evaded, moving to pull open the heavy door. Before us, like a split-level ranch home, lay two choices. To the right, head up a half-flight to the main reception area. To the left, down a half-flight to the restaurant. Down we went.

  We had barely reached the maître d’ stand when a hearty voice bellowed from further within the restaurant. “There you are! Come on over!”

  The room was elegant in a comfortable way, with pool-table-green carpet and light tan walls with ivory wainscoting. The tables were set, but most waited empty. Only a few of the twenty or so tables were taken by middle-aged women talking animatedly. A wooden bar to the left was similarly sparse.

  Along the right side wall a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows opened on a spectacular view of the putting green and golf course. The foliage was long gone, but the rolling hills of fir and pine were delightful, especially with the delicate lacing of snow just fading at the edges.

  A large, well-built man stood before us, holding a glass of gin and tonic in one hand, his other outstretched to draw us in. He had a prime table along the windows, and we settled in across from him. Hands were shaken all around.

  “Welcome, welcome,” Richard offered heartily, settling back into his seat and waving a hand in the air. In a moment the waitress had come over, her jet-black hair framing a smiling face. Richard looked between us. “What’ll you have? It’s on me, of course. Have to do my part to keep this place flush.” He grinned and took down a drink.

  “Just water for me,” I demurred. It was barely noon, and I was still blinking away the sleep from my eyes.

  Jason nodded in agreement, and we picked up our menus to scan the offerings. Everything looked good. They had salads, sandwiches, as well as heartier dishes such as veal parmesan and filet mignon.

  Richard barely waited for our menus to return to the table before leaning forward to jab a finger at Jason. “I could have told you not to bother with Sam,” he teased. “That man barely knows which end of a chicken to lop off. And Charles is as skittish as a Catholic school girl fearing her first kiss. You should have come to me first. I could have set you straight on everything.”

  I glanced at Jason. Apparently Richard’s network infiltrated every corner of Sutton. For a town of ten thousand people, it sometimes seemed as if I lived in Grover’s Corners.

  The waitress was back with our water and asked after our orders. Richard took the filet, medium rare. I asked for the salmon picatta, and Jason ordered a hamburger. Richard watched the waitress leave with an appreciative eye, then turned back to us.

  “I imagine what you really want to know about was that night in 1968,” he stated, sweeping us with his eyes as if beginning a presentation to an attentive jury. “It’s all quite simple. We were drinking. I know we shouldn’t have been, but there you have it. Some Boone’s Farm cheap rosé on the beach, to celebrate Eileen’s seventeenth birthday.”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes shining at the memory. “God, she was a beauty. Had this real Marilyn Monroe sweetness about her, and a figure to match.” He shrugged. “And then we made the foolish but age-appropriate decision to go piling into our canoes and paddle around Lake Singletary while drunk.”

  Jason’s eyes were steady on Richard’s. “What happened then?”

  Richard took another gulp of his gin and tonic. “There was some horseplay. Eileen was in John’s canoe, of course, and I wanted her in mine. She laughed that bright laugh of hers and said there was plenty of her to share. And so she tried to cross.”

  I pursed my lips. “Where were Sam and Charles in all of this?”

  He shrugged, a twinkle in his eyes. “Where they always were. In their own canoe, trying to keep up with us.”

  Jason kept his gaze. “So she tried to cross –”

  The waitress returned with a tray, laying out salads for me and Richard. Richard tapped his glass and she nodded with a smile, heading off again. The salad looked delicious – glistening cherry tomatoes, fresh greens, and a good mix of other items as well. I smiled. Getting a decent salad was becoming a lost art.

  Richard was stuffing a forkful of salad in his mouth. “She tried to cross, and she lost her footing. I grabbed for her, of course, and John dove for her as well. That capsized his canoe, I nearly overturned on top of them both, and by the time the splashing and yelling stopped she was gone. She was simply not there.”

  I took a sip of my water. “So you never saw what happened to her?”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t that she was flailing for help and we couldn’t get to her. She simply wasn’t there at all. It took us all by surprise at first. We assumed she was teasing us – was hiding behind one of our canoes and would spring out with wild laughter. So we called for her. I remember Sam even sounded a bit angry, that she would upset us like that.” His eyes shadowed for a moment. “But after a few minutes we realized she really was gone. And then we began to search in earnest.”

  The waitress was back with his drink, and he took a long swallow. “But that was it. There was no moon that night and a low fog had rolled in. We dove and swam, and called out, but there was never the slightest trace of her. Finally Sam insisted we go back to shore and get some help. So we did. But they didn’t find her for two days.”

  Jason’s voice was even. “What do you think happened?”

  Richard leaned back, looking out the window. On a back green, a sprinkler head flared into life, incongruous against the decoration of melting snow on the edges of the grass.

  “I think she was full of life and she thought she was invincible,” he murmured at last, his eyes not leaving the bright landscape. “We all did. We never gave a thought to life slowing us down. Everything rolled out before us and we just had to grab for what we wanted. She was going to be a movie star and tackle powerful dramas, like To Sir with Love, only with female stars. I was going to be a lawyer and save the oppressed. Charles was going to go into stocks and bonds to finance all of our projects.”

  I kept my voice low. “And Sam?”

  He gave a snort, turning toward us again, swirling his drink with a motion of his wrist. “Sam was going to wring the heads off of chickens.”

  Jason’s voice was contemplative. “Do you think one of the others could have had something to do with her not coming up?”

  Richard gave a guttural laugh. “Those miscreants? I doubt any of them had the brains to organize something that devious. Sam could barely look at her without blushing. Charles, for all his plans, could never keep his own bank account organized, never mind a more complicated task. And John …”

  I watched him. “And John?”

  “John loved her,” he finished, glancing up. The waitress was back and our plates were laid out. The food was richly aromatic; my salmon looked absolutely divine with wild rice and artichoke hearts across the top. Our waters were refilled and I took a bite. It tasted as good as it looked.

  Jason enjoyed his b
urger for a minute before continuing. “Maybe John was jealous over something she had done?”

  Richard shook his head. “John was completely convinced of his own powers of seduction,” he countered. “He thought every girl within a hundred mile radius was helpless against his overpowering charms. Eileen could have been dating twenty other boys and he wouldn’t have cared, because he would have been absolutely certain that they were only being used to tease him.” He sliced through his steak, leaving a bloody streak behind the motion. “I think the poor guy was actually thinking of proposing to her.”

  I paused. “Do you think she would have accepted?”

  He looked down at his steak for a moment. “You know? I think she would have. She was just that romantic, to want to head for the Hollywood Lights with her childhood sweetheart at her side.”

  I pondered this. “Would anyone have been upset by this?”

  “Maybe Charles,” he offered, putting another cube of steak into his mouth. “Charles was always jealous that John got all the girls even though he had no prospects. John’s father was a mill worker in Whitinsville; their house was fairly run down. Charles had a notion that his wealthy family connections should gain him instant success in the romance department.”

  The Whitinsville mill reference sounded a chime deep in my memory, and it was a moment before I connected it to a thought. “Esther Magill worked at a mill in Whitinsville.”

  His eyes flashed with strong emotion. I realized it was the first time that something authentic had pushed through that pleasant mask on his face. And then the glimpse was gone; the placid retiree golfer was back with his forest-green collar shirt and cool ice-blue eyes.

  “Ah, you mean that case from back in the thirties,” he pondered, letting his eyes drift back out to the landscape. “Yes, we heard about that while growing up, of course.”

  I leant forward. “Newell Sherman, the man who murdered his wife Alice, did so in order to win the love of Esther Magill,” I clarified. “They both worked at the mills in Whitinsville.”

  “So they did,” he agreed. “A tragedy, that. Left a pair of young children orphaned.”

  “What happened to them?”

  He shrugged, taking a sip of his drink. “The son Dudley passed away in the nineties. The daughter still lives in Sutton.” His voice dropped down a notch. “Must have been hard on her to grow up with that legacy,” he added.

  “Were any of you related to the family?”

  He shook his head. “Although here in Sutton everyone knows everyone, of course. One relative worked right here at the Pleasant Valley Country Club for a while before taking over the Blue Jay. I’m sure I’ve run into her once or twice over the years.”

  The waitress swung by to clear away our plates and to refill the water yet again. I smiled at her. This had got to be some of the best service I’d seen at a restaurant in the area. I definitely put the restaurant on my list of places to return to.

  Jason’s voice was even. “So you’re positive that there was no foul play involved with Eileen?”

  Richard nodded his head. “We were young and foolish, but I don’t think it occurred to any of us that we could die. The thought didn’t enter our heads. When she didn’t come up, there wasn’t even a glimmer of an idea that she could be hurt. We simply thought she was joking with us.”

  He looked between us. “And now, if you have no more questions, I think I’ll get in some putting practice while we have this sunshine. It may be the last I see until March or so.”

  We nodded, and he pushed himself up to standing, making his way toward the main door of the restaurant.

  Jason watched until he had vanished from view before turning back to me. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s a lawyer with decades of practice swaying an audience,” I replied. “The only time we seemed to catch him off guard was when we asked about the 1935 murder.”

  “He did seem well prepared for everything else,” agreed Jason. “So, what do we do now?”

  “While we wait for Charles to come out of hiding, maybe we talk with John’s good friend Adam again,” I suggested. “Adam is the only one who doesn’t have a vested interest in hiding the incidents of 1968. If Adam and John were as close as he says they were, maybe John has told him about that night. We could see if John’s story matches what we’ve heard from Richard and Sam so far.”

  Jason raised an eyebrow. “I forgot to ask. Which hobbit was Richard supposed to be?”

  I smiled at that. “He was Frodo, the man in charge,” I responded. “The one that the others all turned to; the one they followed.”

  “Maybe there is more to the story than he’s willing to share.” He looked out the window at the streaming sunshine. “Shall I drive you home?”

  I nodded. “I have a lot to get done today, and as much I would love to soak in a draught of sunshine, I am afraid I will have to stay indoors.” I smiled at him. “Besides, I have to rest up tonight. I hear there is a happening gig in town tomorrow night and I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

  He smiled at that, then stood, putting out a hand. I took it, my head rising, my heart lifting, and I was safe, settled, and incandescently content.