Whispering Pines Mysteries Box Set 3

by Shawn McGuire

  Suzette was fired for suspicion of stealing drugs from a nursing home so comes to live with her aunt who dies suddenly in her sleep and leaves everything to Suzette? I could see why the neighbors might have suspected foul play.

  “It’s not that her neighbors were mean to her.” Alan was getting more animated now. “In fact, a few had started checking on her. Mrs. LeBeau organized the schedule and was here herself every other day. Every day for the last few weeks, even if someone else had already been here.”

  “Did the neighbors have keys to the house?”

  “No. Suzette knew the schedule and let them in when they got here.”

  “It’s nice that they came to check on her. Considering she wasn’t very popular.”

  “Like I said, they didn’t ignore her. But you’re right, she wasn’t well-liked.”

  “Because of the rumored threats she’d been making against some of the villagers?”

  “I suppose. I know she could be mean, horrible to some. I’m not sure how she got to that point. Even though she didn’t always show it, she loved it here.”

  “Was there any validity to the rumors?”

  Alan dragged a hand over his mouth. “I honestly don’t know much about that. Only that folks had a lot to say about it.”

  It sounded to me like the ladies at Hearth & Cauldron hadn’t simply been spreading gossip. Suzette lost her job and couldn’t get another one in her chosen field because of the theft allegations so set up a call line. Amazing what people were willing to do to survive.

  “Did she have much money?” I asked. “I heard she wasn’t exactly struggling.”

  “That’s partly why I came here now.” He blew out a hard breath. “She wanted to be sure all her finances were in order and asked me to help her with that.”

  “Did you get to that point?”

  “Of going through her paperwork? We didn’t get through much of it. We discussed her funeral arrangements. She knew she didn’t have long left and didn’t want to die in this house so was planning to move to a care facility after the holidays.” He chuckled ironically. “She said dying here would leave a bad karma smudge on the place and mess with the next people who lived here.”

  I couldn’t help but smile with him. Maybe Suzette was more Wiccan than she let on. “She planned to sell the cottage?”

  “That’s what I figured she’d do. Either that or leave it to my dad.”

  “I understand they didn’t have a very good relationship.”

  “They didn’t. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other in twenty years.” He sat a little straighter. “I was shocked to learn she’d named me executor of her will and was leaving the cottage and everything she owned to me.” His smile turned uncomfortable. “I really like Whispering Pines so was very touched. We don’t plan to move here, but it will be a great vacation place.”

  Something about that statement raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “When did you find out she was leaving everything to you?”

  He sipped from his cup. “She told me she had named me executor when the doctors said there was nothing more they could do for her. I didn’t know that everything was coming to me. Not until I saw the will.”

  “She just died a few hours ago. When did you see the will?”

  He sipped again, eyes on me. “She told me about it yesterday.”

  “Did you see the will or did she tell you about it?”

  He hesitated before saying, “She told me what was in it.”

  “And you already know you don’t plan to move here? To me, that kind of decision would require some time to think about.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Nina and I have careers that we love. Of course we wouldn’t move here. What I meant was even though we can’t live here, this will make a good vacation home.”

  I nodded but didn’t respond.

  After a few-second pause, he blurted, “I didn’t kill her. I understand that being the recipient of everything she owned might make me look guilty. Being here when she died doesn’t help. She asked me to come, because according to her doctor, she was literally weeks, no more than a month, from death.”

  Claiming to not have gone through much of her paperwork but knowing the contents of the will didn’t help either.

  I let him sit in silence for a minute, then asked, “Do you think someone killed her?”

  “Don’t you?” His voice rose a bit. “There’s no way she could have gotten her chair down the ramp with all that snow on it. You heard all those people giving her a hard time at The Inn last night. Any one of them could have done this. And she’s only wearing a nightgown with a little blanket over her legs. That’s what she wore to bed. She piled on the clothes otherwise. No, someone pushed her out there.”

  “You think one of the villagers came here last night while you were sleeping, took your aunt out of her bed, put her in her chair, and dragged her outside?”

  He took a moment to think that through. “Look, I know how farfetched that sounds, but I don’t know how else she got outside. I know I didn’t take her.”

  “Speaking of getting the chair through the snow,” I began, “why did you take her to The Inn? It had to be a real workout getting her there.”

  He relaxed a little bit. “That’s what I told her, but it was really important to her to go to one last gathering. This village and its rule about no vehicles in the commons area is ridiculous.” He stopped, held up a hand, and collected himself. “Sorry. I understand why vehicles aren’t allowed, but you’d think in certain situations an exception could be made.”

  My mind immediately went back to last month and how Drake, one of the employees at Unity, the village clinic, drove the clinic van through the commons to Grapes, Grains, and Grub’s front porch. Thank God he did. Silence might have died otherwise.

  “You know what, Mr. Thibodeaux? You’re right about that. It is, under certain circumstances, ridiculous.” Newt James, the village delivery guy, used a battery-powered golf cart to drop off packages at the shops. “I’m going to propose to the village council that we allow an electric cart or wheelchair in situations like your aunt’s.”

  He didn’t respond other than to stare over his coffee cup at me.

  “Tell me about what happened from the time you left The Inn to when you found your aunt outside.”

  Alan closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts. “Laurel asked us to leave around nine o’clock. I was so angry at everyone for attacking Suzette the way they did, I needed a few minutes to cool off. I left Nina with her and went up to the third floor, walked up and down the hallway, then down to the second floor and did the same thing. I returned ten minutes later, and we left the building about nine fifteen.”

  Ten minutes of pacing the halls? I didn’t even need ten minutes to get from The Inn to the station. Seemed like an awful lot of walking to me but I was inserting my own opinion here. Maybe he had needed that much time to cool off.

  “Pushing that wheelchair through the snow was a struggle,” he continued. “There was at least an inch of new stuff on the ground by then. It took a good twenty or thirty minutes to get to the parking lot, so it was probably nine forty-five when we got to the minivan, ten o’clock when we got back here.”

  I jotted down the timeline as he spoke. “What happened when you got here?”

  “Suzette was giddy after her interaction with the villagers. I’m embarrassed to say it, but few things made her happier than ‘poking the bears’ as she liked to call it. She went on and on about how upset everyone got.” Alan shook his head, dismissing that line of thought. “Anyway, Nina came inside with us for a while.”

  This caught my attention. “I thought they didn’t get along.”

  “They didn’t. I think because Suzette was in such a good mood, Nina figured it would be a good time to try and mend fences.”

  “And did they?”

  “I’m not sure any fences were mended, but they didn’t hurl any insults at each other. Take that for what it’s worth. S
hortly after we got here, we had our tea. That’s a bedtime ritual for Nina and me. We got some of that Midwinter blend from the pregnant woman.”

  “You mean Morgan? She makes the best tea.” I’d had so much wassail last night, I didn’t think to try her latest seasonal blend. I made a mental note to stop by and get some from her.

  “I was already tired when we got home,” Alan explained. “Between the stress of Suzette being so sick, seeing her so emaciated, and then having to deal with the drama at The Inn, I think it all caught up to me. Between that, the warm tea, and the high temperature inside this house, I was ready for bed by ten thirty or quarter to eleven.”

  “What about Suzette and Nina? Were they still up when you went to bed?”

  “No. Nina left when I was ready to call it a night. I offered to help Suzette get ready for bed, like I had the night before, but she snapped at me that she was perfectly capable of getting undressed and into her nightgown. So, I said goodnight, went to my room, and heard her moving around out here until I fell asleep, which was pretty fast.”

  “You slept all night?”

  He nodded. “I slept surprisingly well considering all the drama.” He paused to think. “Someone must have come here and took her outside, it’s the only scenario that makes sense, but I didn’t hear a thing. I woke to the sound of someone pounding on the door around eight thirty, which shocked me. I’m not a super-early riser, but even on the weekends, I’m up by seven. Seven thirty at the very latest.”

  “Who was at the door?”

  “LaVonne LeBeau with a coffee cake.”

  Ah, that explained the cake on the table out in the living room.

  “I let her in, and we talked for a few minutes. I told her Suzette must’ve been asleep because her bedroom door was still shut.”

  “And then what?”

  “She left, or so I thought. I figured Suzette would be up at any minute so took a super-fast shower, like three minutes, and got dressed. By that time, LaVonne was pounding on the door again. She didn’t even wait for me to answer. She came bursting in to tell me Suzette was outside on the patio. I shoved my feet into my boots, grabbed my jacket, and ran outside with her.”

  “Did you touch her at all?”

  He frowned. “LaVonne?”

  I bit my tongue. His confusion was understandable but still humorous. “Did you check your aunt to see if she was really dead? Did you call out to her, check for a pulse, anything like that?”

  He shook his head. “You saw her. There was no doubt she was dead.”

  Again, my instincts prickled. Upon finding someone in that kind of condition, the first reaction would normally be to call out or shake them, something to see if they were okay.

  “That’s when you called for Deputy Reed and me?”

  “LaVonne called from here. She knew no one was at the station but thought you might still be at The Inn so called there. She talked to Laurel who used her walkie talkie to call Deputy Reed. LaVonne waited with me until you got here. You know the rest.”

  That statement matched very closely with what Reed reported earlier.

  I went through our conversation in my mind again while reviewing my notes. The big question, other than how did Suzette Thibodeaux die, was how did she end up outside?

  I glanced toward the back door, about six feet from where we were sitting. On a three-foot square of wood in front of the door were footprints, like from melted and dried snow. The linoleum that covered the rest of the kitchen floor was too patterned to clearly show how far into the house the prints came. I went over for a closer look.

  “Did you see these before?” I asked Alan. “Have they been here for a while or are they recent?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I was going to mention those. I noticed them when I came in here to sit earlier.”

  “You think they’re significant?”

  “I’d say yes. My aunt hadn’t gone out there in months.”

  “Did you? Since you got here, did you use this door at all.”

  After a short pause, he shook his head. “No.”

  “Not to clear the snow?”

  “No, I went out through the front door, cleared the sidewalk, then the driveway, then the patio. I left the shovel on the front porch in case it snowed again and came back in the front door.”

  “What about Nina? Did she go out this door?”

  “Last night was the only time she’d been in here. She made the tea for us here in the kitchen but didn’t go outside.”

  “She made tea in here even though there’s an electric kettle in the living room?”

  “She said there was more room to work in here.” He quickly returned to the footprints. “The thing is, if Suzette had gone out there, there would be wheelchair tracks, not footprints. And I don’t think she was strong enough anymore to push the chair back up the ramp by herself even if it wasn’t covered with snow.” He thought for a moment. “I guess it’s remotely possible that she stood outside the door and came back in with wet shoes.”

  All excellent points. Mostly to myself, I mumbled, “Then who left the footprints?”

  “Exactly.”

  I crouched near the square of wood. The prints faced every direction, as though the person had entered the house and then turned around to close and lock the door. “The prints show a heavy tread, like snow or hiking boots.”

  “Then it definitely wasn’t Suzette. She raved about the pair of ultra-warm slippers she ordered from some mail order catalog. She never took them off. Unless she was getting into bed.”

  I stood, held out my foot, and hovered it next to a print to get an idea of shoe size. They were approximately the same, which meant these prints belonged to either a female or a man with really small feet. Or a younger teenage boy.

  Chapter 13

  I couldn’t think of any small men but needed approximately two seconds to identify Sutton O’Connor as a possible teenage male suspect. April had gone into detail about how he was so upset over the Suzette blackmail problem he wasn’t eating. Another ten seconds gave me several female villagers who had issues with Suzette. When Lily Grace showed up on the list, I dismissed her immediately. She wouldn’t do this. End of story. As I started ticking off other candidates in my mind, Reed called for me from the front door. Expanding the list would have to wait.

  “In the kitchen,” I responded.

  “Dr. Bundy is here.”

  “Be right there.” I turned to Alan. “Did you touch anything in the kitchen this morning?”

  He thought before saying, “No. I made coffee in the living room. I’ve been in here before this morning, though. I assume you’re wondering about fingerprints. I touched the refrigerator and a couple of cabinets. Probably the countertops too.”

  “I’ll take that into consideration. I’d like you to move out to the living room. Those footprints make the kitchen part of the crime scene. I don’t want anything else in here touched until we clear the room. Okay?”

  Alan immediately stood, his nearly empty mug of coffee in hand. “Of course. No problem.”

  I pulled my jacket back on, along with my gloves and black stocking cap with a gold star and “Sheriff” embroidered across the cuff. I stood next to Reed outside and was happy to find the medical examiner had arrived quietly, no lights flashing or sirens blaring. He still drew the attention of everyone on the street. A few had come out on their porches to see what the ruckus was all about when Reed and I arrived but went back inside. Now they clustered in the street in small groups with their neighbors, probably asking if anyone knew what was going on. After only a few minutes, most of them returned to the warmth of their homes. Except for a few diehards who swore the Northern Wisconsin winters never bothered them, it was too cold for most folks to stand around outside for very long. Fortunately, the diehards knew to stay back from the scene.

  “I put Meeka in your car,” Reed told me. “She started racing at full speed up and down the street, so I figured she was trying to keep warm.”

  “
Thanks. I put her favorite blanket in her cage. Between that, her parka, and the sun shining in the window, she’s probably toasty and snoring away.”

  “I also made a sketch.” He flashed a pad of grid paper with a hand-drawn image of the area from the house’s back door to the area around the victim. “Didn’t figure I needed to do more than that since the rest of the yard is untouched snow.”

  It was a fairly detailed sketch. “How long was I talking to Alan?”

  “Long enough for me to do this.” He gave me a cheesy grin.

  Dr. Wolfgang “Wolf” Bundy looked more like the “I can’t put my arms down” kid from A Christmas Story than the medical examiner I’d gotten to know quite well over the last seven months. He had on black snow pants and clompy Sorel boots. His bright-red parka looked as though it could withstand a blizzard on Antarctica. As did his fur-lined black-and-red checked hat with ear flaps. He also had a dark heather-gray scarf wrapped around his neck.

  “You in there, Doc?” I teased.

  “Two months.” He held up two fingers. Or I assumed that’s what he was trying to do. His thick black gloves made finger separation difficult. “Haven’t heard from you in two months. I thought things were improving.”

  “For two months, things did improve.” There was the incident with Silence, but she survived. Thank God. “Sorry to bring you out on such a cold day.”

  He made his way to us, waddling like a penguin. “Your victim would be here a long while if you waited for a warm day. We’ve got a good three months until that happens. I hear we have a cancer patient this time?”

  Reed nodded soberly and murmured, “She won’t be needing treatments anymore.”

  We led Dr. Bundy around to the back of the house.

  “How’d she get out here?” he wondered. “Never mind. That’s what you’re trying to figure out.”

  “Any initial guesses?” I asked.

  Dr. B waddled over to Thibodeaux, removed a glove, revealing a latex glove underneath, and checked her carotid. He shook his head and tugged his winter glove back on. Bending at the waist, with hands resting on his knees, he got a more direct look at her.