The Body on the Roof

by Kevin Creager

  “Oh, yes!” Mindy laughed, Nellie smiled, Larabeth looked embarrassed. Susan answered. “Those were her stories.”

  “Her stories?” Peabody scratched his forehead in confusion.

  “Her stories,” Larabeth said with a touch of disgust. As the other women looked at her, she added, “I’m sorry. I got more than a little tired of them.”

  “She used them to tell stories,” Susan continued. “When she was still teaching, she sometimes brought some miscellaneous objects in and prompted her students to tell stories about them. Like, say she brought in a toy horseman. Some boy could write a story about what the horseman had done or was going to do. She would bring in a box of these things and let each of the children pick one, then come up with a story. It was her way of inspiring creativity, but also getting the kids to write.” She turned to Larabeth. “That children’s author, Nathan Straw, came from her class.”

  “Yes, I know,” Larabeth replied, but her tone hadn’t changed. “And that was fine for her students, but she kept doing it after she had retired. Only she was the one making up the stories. And she did it all the time.”

  “Not all the time,” Nellie interrupted.

  “Well, most of the time. A lot of the time anyway. We alternated where we had our Literary Society meetings, and, when it was her turn, she usually had several new pieces out, and had a tale ready for each one.”

  “I thought it was kind of fun.” Mindy laughed. “I always looked forward to it.”

  “You would.” Larabeth was not giving up her annoyance at the topic.

  “Well, it was different, anyway. Not like the usual just eat and talk.” Mindy did not hide her resentment at the last remark. “Since we don’t do as much reading anymore. Not like what we used to.”

  “What were the stories like?” Peabody was trying to ease the slight tension. He wasn’t here to mediate. Certainly not between women, if he could help it.

  Susan responded, apparently having noticed the same thing he did. “She’d hold up something, say a piece of glass with a flower design, and narrate us a story. ‘This was designed for the thirteenth birthday party of Princess Bertha Mae of Denmark. She used it on all her stationary and even embroidered into her clothes. From that point on, it was considered a good luck symbol in Denmark.’ Then she’d add a fable of a time when it was not used and bad luck came about. It was just silly stuff, harmless enough. We just knew it was going to happen whenever we were here.”

  “Where did they come from? These objects. In real life, I mean.”

  Nellie shrugged. “She always had a lot of those things. Her shelves were full of them.”

  “I asked her once,” Mindy added. “She just said, ‘Here and there’. I think it was antique shops and yard sales. That’s where you see that stuff.”

  “Was any of it valuable?”

  “Not that I know of.” Larabeth looked to the others for confirmation. They all shook their heads. “What does it matter?”

  Peabody paused, but realized he was here to get information, so he may have to also provide some.

  “Some of the pieces appear to be missing. From the cabinet in the living room. We noticed that many did not seem to fit her personality or her apparent interests and wondered why she had them. You have all helped me get an idea of why she had them, but now I’m still wondering how she got them and why someone would take some from her. So the theft could have to do with how she got them in the first place.”

  “I think she liked them being different than something she would pick out for herself,” Susan said. “She once said something about Harry bringing some boxes over for her. That he liked to bring her something when he came to visit.”

  “Her nephew, Harry Townsend?”

  “Oh, yes.” Mindy smiled. “He was always visiting and bringing her things like that. He is such a good boy.”

  “You don’t know where he got them from?”

  They all shook their heads. Susan added, “We have no idea which pieces he may have brought. If any.”

  “And you’re not aware of anything valuable among her collection? Anything that had a real story behind it?”

  Susan moved the cheesecake away before he could take another piece. “If there was anything worth some money, I don’t think she knew it. That isn’t why she collected them. And she wouldn’t have spent a lot of money on something like that. Come to think of it, she wouldn’t have spent a lot of money on probably anything. Having expensive or valuable things just didn’t matter to her.”

  Peabody recognized that there was probably no more relevant information to be obtained, and no more cheesecake as long as Susan was watching what he ate.

  “Thank you ladies for your time and for the wonderful dessert.” He paused, giving somebody time to offer “One more for the road?” but Susan seemed to have made it pretty clear. “You have been very helpful, and this does tell us some things we didn’t know before.”

  As he left, Peabody considered what he had really learned. The odd collection had been used to inspire and tell stories, but that didn’t explain why some were now missing. And what the heck did it have to do with her death?

  CHAPTER 13

  After Stephanie Reasoner entered the Summerfield Bank, she stopped and gazed around the high-ceilinged open lobby. It wasn’t very busy yet at this time of day, and off to the right, she found Harry Townsend, Mel Johnson, and Charlene Matthews, the bank manager, talking in front of the door to the safety deposit vault. She walked in that direction as they looked up.

  “Steph,” Johnson said. “You know Charlene, don’t you?”

  “Ms. Matthews.” Reasoner nodded at her. “I assume Mr. Townsend has informed you why we are here.”

  “Yes, Stephanie, he did. You want to see Grace Mathison’s safety deposit box.” Matthews held out a piece of paper. “I understand this is a murder investigation...”

  “Let’s say suspicious death at this point.” Reasoner wanted to avoid overusing the word “murder” around Townsend.

  “Oh,” Matthews looked down at her paper. “I had them fill in ‘murder’ on this form. It’s for you to sign saying you’re taking responsibility for opening the box. I don’t know if...”

  “That’s okay. We’ll go with that for now.” Reasoner took the form from her, walked over to a table to get a pen, and signed the form at the bottom. “Is that all we need?”

  “Normally, no. But we all know Mrs. Mathison has died and that the police department has to have access to anything that may help solve her...suspicious death.” Matthews took the form. “Harry, do you have the key?”

  He nodded at Reasoner who handed over the small red envelope and then he signed the entry book. Matthews unlocked the outer vault door, checked the number of the right box, used two small keys to unlock that box’s panel, and then left them to it.

  Townsend asked, “Is it okay if Mel stays? He may recognize something that I don’t.”

  Reasoner hesitated, but figured Johnson had been part of much of this already, so she merely shrugged.

  Townsend pulled out the small box and set it on the table in the middle of the vault. He looked at Reasoner, lifted the lid, and pulled out an envelope.

  “This says it’s her mortgage. Should we check?”

  Reasoner nodded. “I think we need to check everything just to make sure.” She had her official Summerfield Police Department Log out so that she could note the contents. “And we want to do it with both of us here.”

  Townsend opened the envelope. It was the mortgage with Paid and the date stamped across the front. He put it next to the box and pulled out the next set of papers.

  “Insurance. Here’s h
ome insurance, car insurance, and life insurance. Should I see the details on the life insurance?”

  “You’re going to have to know them at some point. Let me look at it.” She took that paper from him. “It look likes the beneficiaries are you and your sister. The total is for one hundred thousand. So the two of you take out funeral costs and split what’s left.”

  “I didn’t know. Honestly, I didn’t.”

  Reasoner looked at Johnson.

  “I knew, but I never shared it with Harry. That was Grace’s business.”

  “Okay, we’ll determine if that’s true later, but for now, I’ll accept that.” Internally she made a note to check into Townsend’s finances to determine if he might have had an immediate need for that kind of money. “What else do we have?”

  “Her will.” Townsend handed it straight to her. “She never told me what was in it.”

  Reasoner glanced through it, just to make sure that it looked typical and that there weren’t any surprises. “All right. This information you’ll need to hear from her lawyer. But it looks fairly standard. Next.”

  Some miscellaneous papers were in a manila folder marked, appropriately, “Miscellaneous”. It included a statement of her diamond ring’s value, as of forty years ago, several receipts for various structural improvements around the house, a listing of the house contents and furniture, and a couple of older letters.

  “From the looks of it, I don’t think this list of the contents has been updated in over ten years. Probably not very reliable now,” Reasoner noted. “And these letters,” she took a brief look, “appear to be personal, oh...very personal letters from Ralph. And a picture. You may not want to see these, but apparently, she had reason to keep them.” She put all of the papers in a pile.

  “I would like, with your permission, to have Ms. Matthews make copies of all of these, except for the personal letters, just so that there’s no question of what was originally in here, then put these back. That okay with you? I don’t see anything significant offhand, anything that’s relevant to her death, but we had to look.”

  Townsend looked down at the pile. “Yeah, okay, I guess that’s okay.”

  “We’ll take a more in-depth look later, but I don’t expect to find anything. It looks pretty usual for what people would keep here.”

  Townsend breathed out as if he had been holding it in for a long time. “Well, I didn’t think there would be anything. Aunt Grace wasn’t the type of person to have any big secrets.”

  Reasoner left the vault, and the two men watched her hand the collection of papers to Charlene Matthews. Within a few minutes, they returned the papers to the box and returned the box to its place, and left the vault together. Townsend now seemed anxious to leave.

  “I need to get back to the office. Is there anything else that we need to do, that you need us for? If not, I’ve been gone a long time, and there are things I probably need to do.” Johnson nodded in agreement and looked at Reasoner as if for permission to leave.

  Reasoner was surprised at the comment as neither one had any reservations about leaving earlier. “I imagine Sherri has everything under control. But for the moment, I think we are done here. Have a good afternoon, and thank you again for your assistance today.”

  Once they were outside, Townsend started to walk off, realized he was going in the wrong direction and had to turn around in front of Reasoner. He smiled embarrassedly. “Just distracted I guess. You have a good day.” Johnson was waiting for him on the sidewalk.

  Very distracted, Reasoner thought. Very distracted indeed.

  CHAPTER 14

  Somewhat distracted himself, Jeff Pierson walked into Conference Room A to find another plate of fresh baked goods sitting in the middle of the table. Where does Hazy get these, he thought. We don’t have a budget for them. Is she dating the baker?

  The board was organized much more neatly than before – Hazy’s handiwork again. Legible and easy to follow, certainly not his own typical method of communication.

  The others followed, one at a time, with Peabody finding his seat and a doughnut just at the four o’clock appointed meeting time. No mayor or crime scene people this time. Hazlett stood next to the board with the chalk firmly in her hand. She was not going to let Pierson mess up her carefully crafted columns or neatly written notes.

  He started to stand, realized Hazlett was already there and glaring at him, then moved around the corner of the table so he could face the board and sat back down.

  “Okay, Hazy will now apparently be taking the notes for us. So where are we? Did anyone come up with anything new?”

  Addams cleared his throat. “I took a specific look at the items reported stolen from garage sales. Many of the smaller ones are in Mrs. Mathison’s curio shelves. Only a couple of the missing ones were on the list, though. The Laurel and Hardy statuette...”

  Reasoner chimed in, “That’s what Harry Townsend confirmed it was.”

  Addams nodded and continued, “And a small pottery bowl. The problem is that many of these types of items were to be sold in boxes of miscellaneous things, and the homeowners couldn’t always remember just what had been put in those boxes. If anything was going to be sold individually out of those boxes, it was going to be for a dime or a quarter, maybe a dollar. Nothing considered worth stealing, or specifically reporting stolen.”

  “Unless it had some personal value to the person reporting it.” Pierson opened his mouth again as if he wanted to say more, but decided not to and waved it off. “Just go on.”

  “Unless, as Jeff said, it was personally valuable to the person who reported the thefts. But then, if it was that personally valuable, why did they put it in a box of junk?”

  “Why indeed?” Pierson interrupted again. Reasoner turned to look at him, but he ignored her.

  “So some of her collection shows up on the lists, but not a lot. Which may explain where they came from originally, but not why she has them or how they came into her possession.”

  Peabody brushed some crumbs off his lip. “Well, I can give you some ideas as to why she has them, but not how she got them.” He straightened up in his chair. “According to the illustrious members of the Summerfield Literary Society, these objects were her stories.”

  “What?” Reasoner asked.

  “Her stories. Apparently, when she was teaching, she used to bring in a box or a bag of small objects and have her students pick a particular one out and write a story about that object. It was a prompt for creativity.”

  “All right,” Reasoner said slowly. “But she’s not teaching now.”

  “My wife says she still uses, excuse me, used them for made-up stories, only now she does, did the telling.”

  “Your wife?” Pierson was puzzled.

  “My wife, Susan, is a member of this book club. It didn’t occur to me right away this morning that it was the same club. I knew who the members were, but I never have anything to do with them, just to say ‘hello’ to. I had the least contact with Grace Mathison, and never put it together with Susan’s book club. Anyway, Susan said when Grace hosted the club meetings, she usually pulled out some odd piece and made up a story about it. I don’t know if she just wanted to be creative or was actually fantasizing that she owned something significant, but that’s what she would do. So Susan says. Sometimes it was interesting, sometimes apparently not. That doesn’t explain how she got them, but it may be why she had such a varied collection. Why things didn’t particularly match each other.”

  From her position in front of the board, Hazlett asked, “Did anyone know if she went to these yard and garage sales?”

  Peabody shrugged. “They assume she did, but no one really knew. They didn’t go with her,
if she did.”

  “So now we’ve got a ‘where they came from’ and a probable ‘why she had them’, but not a ‘how they got to her’.” Addams picked up his lists. “And none of the bigger items have turned up – the clocks, the speakers, the toaster ovens, the valuable jewelry, the first edition books, those types of things. None of them are reportedly worth all that much, not according to their owners, but they were worth something, probably in the twenty to fifty dollar price range at these sales, maybe a little more to a collector or an antique dealer.”

  “Bud, can I see those lists?” Reasoner held out her hand. He passed them over to her, and she quickly scanned through them.

  “Okay, so we’ve got some information regarding her collection, but we don’t know if it has anything to do with her death.” Pierson sighed. “It could be that the missing objects were simply given away by her. Her friends don’t seem to attach any significance to them. They certainly don’t appear to be valuable. We don’t know what it means.”

  “Except that she wasn’t supposed to have them,” Addams said.

  “So that’s a mystery. It may be hard to believe that she accidentally ended up with so many from our stolen property lists, but maybe she picked them all up from some disreputable junk dealer. But we’re here to investigate her death, not junk worth a dollar.” He turned to Reasoner. “Speed, do you have anything to tell us from your morning interviews? Any problems with Harry Townsend?”

  Reasoner had stopped her scanning and was staring at a spot on one page.

  “Speed?”

  She slowly put the paper down, then looked at Pierson and nodded.

  “Yes, Jeff. But not any problems with Mr. Townsend.” She opened her log and took a minute looking at it. “I don’t have anything really vital to report. Mr. Townsend and I went through the house together, as well as with Mel Johnson. The only thing of any significance was that he did notice that some shelves in the cabinet looked different as if some pieces were missing. But he didn’t know what they were till I specifically told him. He acted very shocked when I told him where she had probably been killed. I wasn’t sure at first that I wanted to tell him, but I did want to see what he would do. Unless he’s a very, very good actor, I think his reaction was genuine.