Bake Sale Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Lucy nodded. She knew.

  “And now, jus’ when she was starting to enjoy life a little, she goes and gets herself killed.” He shook his head mournfully and his jowls quivered. “T’rr’ble.”

  The organ music stopped and everyone stood as Fred Stanton and his sons entered through a side door and took their seats in the front pew. All three were wearing somber expressions, new suits, and fresh haircuts; Mimi would have been proud. The congregation began singing a hymn and, as she struggled to follow the unfamiliar tune, Lucy’s mind wandered. She wondered if Mimi had ever seen the men in her family all dressed up, all at the same time. She wondered why Fred and the boys seemed to be the only family Mimi had. Was she an only child? What happened to her parents? What was her marriage to Fred really like? Did he really not know anything about her life before she met him, or was he hiding something? What was he really feeling? she wondered, as the music stopped and he followed the priest’s instructions to kneel in prayer, only feet away from his wife’s body.

  Thunderous organ chords announcing the final hymn broke into Lucy’s reverie and she stood with the rest of the congregation. When the hymn ended, the priest blessed the congregation, then the pallbearers from the funeral home hoisted the coffin onto their shoulders and carried it down the aisle, accompanied by somber chords from the organ. Fred and the boys followed the coffin while everyone waited to be released by the ushers, pew by pew. It was a slow process and, since Lucy and Barney were sitting in the back of the church, they were among the last to leave the church and join the throng gathered on the sidewalk.

  “Are you going to the cemetery?” asked Barney, smoothing his graying brush cut with his hand before replacing his cap.

  “I don’t think so,” said Lucy, who hated standing by that gaping hole in the ground and watching as the coffin was lowered and the ritual handfuls of earth were thrown in. It was an all-too-graphic reminder that death was inescapable.

  Barney doffed his hat and headed for his police car, which would lead the procession with lights flashing. Lucy joined Willie and Bonnie, who were chatting together on the church lawn.

  “It was a lovely service,” Lucy said.

  “If you like that sort of thing,” snorted Willie. “I sure don’t want a lot of people crying over me. I told Scratch to cremate me when I go and toss my ashes on the compost heap where they’ll do some good.”

  “You know, there’s a company that can take people’s ashes and turn them into diamonds,” said Frankie, joining the group. “I think that’s what I’d like. Turn me into a sparkling gem.”

  “Who would wear such a thing?” asked Willie, a shocked expression on her face.

  “My daughter, my sisters.”

  “Yuck. That’s disgusting,” insisted Bonnie. “I think a traditional funeral is best: music, flowers, sobbing mourners.”

  “Not too many sobbing mourners here today,” observed Lucy. “It seems that most people came out of curiosity rather than grief.”

  “I think a lot of people wanted to get a look at that husband of hers,” said Willie.

  “Do you really think he did it?” asked Lucy.

  “Yes!” chorused Bonnie and Willie. Frankie didn’t join the chorus and Lucy wondered if the rumors about her and Fred were true.

  “The husband is always the most likely suspect,” said Lucy, hoping to get the gossip flowing by priming the pump, “but we all know that Mimi could be awfully bitchy. She made a lot of enemies.”

  “I liked her fine until she reported me to the health department for keeping a farm animal in my living room,” muttered Willie. “As if Lily were some sort of hog or something. Why she’s cleaner than most people I know.”

  “She got me in trouble, too,” confessed Frankie. “Renee had a few friends over after school and she called the cops saying it was an unsupervised party. They sent a social worker to question me and decide if I’m a fit mother.”

  “That seems a bit extreme,” observed Lucy.

  “Tell me about it. I was furious, but I couldn’t let on because they could take Renee from me and put her in foster care. It was terrifying.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” said Bonnie. Her tone was so intense that they all turned to look at her, expecting a real horror story, but that was all she said.

  “Don’t tell me she left you alone,” said Frankie, raising an eyebrow.

  “Not at all,” stammered Bonnie. “But it wasn’t a big deal. She just came over and told us we had to register our cars in Maine. We had Massachusetts plates, you see. And of course, we knew that but, well, you know how it is when you’re busy.” She blushed. “It was a helpful reminder, really.”

  “I’d call it being a busybody,” said Lucy. “So do you think there’s going to be some sort of collation at the house?”

  “If there is I’m not going,” said Frankie. “I’ve got to show a house.”

  Willie sniffed, as if showing a house was somehow unseemly. “I’ve got a new riding student coming in half an hour. I’ve got to get changed and get over to the stable.”

  “I’d go,” said Bonnie, “but I don’t think they’ve planned anything. The minister, I mean priest, didn’t mention it and they usually do, don’t they?”

  “They do,” agreed Lucy, whose eye was caught by an extremely unkempt man hovering around the edge of the thinning crowd. He was obviously out of place, with his long hair, shaggy beard, and ragged green Army jacket and people were beginning to notice him. Lucy watched as one older man, dressed in a gray suit, registered his presence. He reacted by taking his wife’s hand—she was a trim woman with white hair dressed in a blue linen dress—and leading her to the car. As others did the same thing, the stranger was left standing all alone, beneath the white statue of the Virgin Mary that stood in front of Our Lady of Hope church.

  The symbolism wasn’t lost on Lucy and she approached him, intending to offer help. As she drew closer she saw that he was in a genuinely sorry state. Bits of leaves and twigs clung to his hair and beard, the sleeves of his jacket were frayed at the cuff and there were holes in both elbows, and his hands and face were filthy. She could tell because the tears running down his face left tracks in the grime.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked, fumbling in her purse for her wallet. “Do you need money?”

  The man stood staring at her for a moment, then shook his head.

  “Are you looking for someone here in town?”

  He didn’t say anything but began to shake so violently that Lucy thought he must be having an attack of some kind.

  “I’ll call for help,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. She flipped it open and dialed 9-1-1, but when the dispatcher answered, the man was already running along the front of the church.

  “There’s a man in some sort of distress at Our Lady of Hope,” said Lucy, flipping the phone shut and following him. When she got to the corner of the building, however, there was no sign of him. He must have disappeared into the woods behind the church. Lucy considered following him there, but decided against it. For one thing, she didn’t know him and he might be irrational, even violent. A lot of homeless people were and that’s what this man seemed to be. But, in truth, Lucy wasn’t afraid of him; she was sorry for him. Whoever he was, he seemed to be the most sincerely grief-stricken of all the mourners at Mimi’s funeral.

  She was walking back to her car when the cruiser arrived and she pointed out the path the man had taken. “We’ve had some other calls,” the cop told her, after she described the man. “So far he hasn’t broken any laws so there isn’t much we can do.”

  “What about protective custody?”

  “He’d have to be a danger to himself or others,” said the cop.

  “Right,” said Lucy, watching as he drove off. She had a feeling that whoever this guy was, he was connected to Mimi, which meant he was either dangerous or in danger himself.

  Chapter 10

  Phyllis took one look at Lucy’s face when s
he got back to the office after the funeral and handed her the box of tissues. “That’s why I hate funerals,” she said, looking up from the stack of press releases she was filing in chronological order. “They’re just so damn depressing.”

  “And she was so young. Only thirty-nine,” added Ted, who was paying bills.

  “I was thinking,” sniffled Lucy, dabbing at her eyes, “how proud Mimi would be of her boys in their suits and haircuts and she probably never saw them like that.” Lucy was really crying now and Phyllis got up and enveloped her in a big Jean Nate-scented hug. “She never got to see them graduate from high school or get married or have kids of their own.”

  “I know. I know,” said Phyllis, patting her on the back.

  “And it isn’t like she had cancer or something that wasn’t anybody’s fault,” continued Lucy. “Somebody killed her. Stabbed her. Who could do something like that? Why would they do it?”

  “From what I’ve heard, everybody thinks it was her husband,” said Ted, looking very somber. “In fact, that’s what I’m writing my editorial about this week. The nationwide increase in domestic violence and how we’re not immune from it even here in Tinker’s Cove.”

  Lucy wiped her face and blew her nose, pulling herself together, and went over to her desk. “I don’t know why I’m acting like this,” she said. “I didn’t even like her and she sure wasn’t popular with her neighbors on Prudence Path. But I saw this man, he looked like he’s been living in the woods, and he looked really sad. Much sadder even than Fred and the boys. He was crying.” Lucy shrugged. “Maybe grief is catching. Maybe I caught it from him.”

  “You know, I think I saw that guy yesterday,” said Phyllis. “He’s got long hair and a beard and wears one of those olive green Army jackets?”

  “That’s the one,” said Lucy. “He looks like a homeless person.”

  “Could be. I saw him hanging around the back of the IGA, near the Dumpsters.”

  “Probably looking for food,” said Lucy, shuddering at the thought.

  “I always expect to see homeless people when I go to Boston or some other big city, but not in Tinker’s Cove,” said Ted. “Here we take care of each other.”

  By and large he was right, thought Lucy. Fore-closures and evictions were a thing of the past since several churches and social service agencies had gotten together and formed a committee that provided financial assistance to people who needed occasional help with rent or mortgage payments. They’d discovered it made a lot more sense, and was a lot more economical, to help people stay in their homes instead of helping them find scarce affordable housing after they’d been evicted.

  “He must have some connection to Mimi,” said Phyllis. “Otherwise why would he go to her funeral?”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out,” said Lucy. “Fred said Mimi had no family except for him and the boys.”

  “Even if he is some long-lost relation, how would he have heard?” asked Phyllis. “It’s not like he’s a subscriber to the Pennysaver.”

  “There was a brief in the Sunday Globe,” said Ted, referring to the Boston paper. “Homeless people use discarded newspapers for bedding, for padding their clothes when it’s cold, for stopping holes in their shoes—he could’ve seen it.”

  “So how’d he get here?” asked Lucy. “Hitch-hike? I wouldn’t pick him up.”

  “Some trucker might’ve been glad for some company on a long overnight haul. Or maybe he took the bus. He could have got the fare panhandling.”

  “I wish I could have talked to him,” said Lucy. “Maybe I could have helped him. He seemed really upset.”

  “You better be careful, Lucy. He might be crazy,” said Phyllis. “Forgot to take his meds and found himself at a fu…”

  Phyllis was talking but nobody could hear a word she said thanks to the fire truck that was screaming down the street, horn honking and siren blaring. It was followed by an ambulance and a couple of police cars. As soon as they’d passed, Ted raised the volume on the scanner and as the wail of the siren receded they heard the dispatcher announce the Stantons’ home address.

  “I’ll go,” said Lucy, grabbing her purse.

  Ted was so absorbed in his editorial that he didn’t object. “Let me know what’s happening,” he said.

  “I will, just as soon as I know,” promised Lucy.

  When she got to Prudence Path, the little cul-de-sac was filled with emergency vehicles. The sound of their throbbing diesel engines and rhythmic flash of their roof lights triggered Lucy’s emotions; these accompaniments to disaster never failed to fill her with dread and she found her pace slowing as she approached the Stanton house on foot. An officer had been stationed at the end of the road and was turning everyone away, so Lucy had parked in her own driveway and taken the path through the lilac bushes that separated her property from the Prudence Path development.

  As was usual on a weekday, the street was deserted. Only Bonnie and Chris, along with Pear and Apple, were standing at the edge of the Stantons’ driveway and Lucy approached them. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Tommy Stanton tried to kill himself,” whispered Bonnie.

  Lucy wasn’t surprised, she realized, which meant that on some level she’d been expecting Tommy to do something like this.

  “When they got back from the funeral I went over to see if there was anything I could do for them. I was there when Preston went in his room and found him.”

  “How awful,” breathed Lucy.

  “He was barely alive,” replied Bonnie. “They’re still working on him, trying to resuscitate him.”

  “What did he take?” asked Chris, who had Apple on her hip and was pushing Pear back and forth in her stroller.

  “Nothing. He hung himself.”

  Lucy was sick with horror—and guilt. She’d sensed Tommy’s desperation and unhappiness, but she hadn’t actually given it much thought. She was like a person who hears a gunshot and thinks it’s a car backfiring.

  Chris gave Apple a squeeze and buried her nose in her soft, blond hair. “The funeral must have been too much for him.”

  Lucy remembered the night she’d given him Gatorade and how grateful he’d been for such a small kindness. She wished they’d insisted he get in the car when they passed him on the road after Sue’s cookout and she couldn’t put the image of his skinny, hunched body out of her mind. He’d looked so fragile and alone then. Maybe if they’d reached out to him it would have been enough to tip the balance and he wouldn’t have felt so desperate.

  “I hope he makes it,” she said.

  “It’s in God’s hands,” said Bonnie.

  “God and the rescue squad,” said Chris. It seemed a long time before the porch door opened and a couple of EMTs emerged pushing and pulling a stretcher. Tommy’s prone figure was hooked up to an IV and his face was uncovered.

  “He’s alive at least,” said Bonnie, echoing Lucy’s thoughts.

  She knew those were good signs and she hoped Tommy was out of the woods. At the same time, she feared he might have suffered irreversible brain damage. They continued to watch as the stretcher containing his motionless body was loaded into the ambulance and Lucy’s mind flashed back to a similar scene the day his mother died.

  “The rescue squad is here too often,” she said.

  “It’s always the Stantons,” said Bonnie, a hint of resentment in her voice.

  “They sure are unlucky,” said Chris.

  Lucy didn’t contradict her, but she doubted that bad luck had anything to do with it. Something was seriously wrong in the Stanton household and Lucy was determined to find out what it was before it grew out of control and engulfed the whole neighborhood.

  “Tell me about Tommy, if you can,” said Lucy, remembering her job and pulling out her notebook.

  “Well,” began Bonnie, “Buck says he’s a bit of a loner…”

  The words sent a chill up her spine. How often had she heard them used to describe a killer, some sociopath who’d gone on a
murder spree? Was Tommy like that? Had he killed his mother as the result of some stupid argument and then been so filled with remorse that he killed himself?

  Lucy couldn’t shake that thought as she retraced her steps down Prudence Path and along the winding path through the lilacs to home. Teenagers were so emotional and so unpredictable, and movies and video games were so permeated with violence that it was no wonder they reached for a knife or gun when frustrated. Lucy had heard of instances where teens killed parents for refusing to allow them to attend a rock concert, or for making them go to church. And then there were the school shootings that seemed to occur with sickening regularity ever since Columbine. She was convinced that all this youthful anger was a symptom that something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure exactly what. Maybe teenage boys should be sent off to live in a hut with tribal elders until they were deemed fit to marry and assume their place in society, as was the custom with some primitive tribes. There were certainly times when she’d wished she could hand her own son, Toby, off to some wise shaman who would teach him the secrets of manhood. Bill had certainly tried, but like most kids, Toby had found it hard to take advice from his father when his father was the very same person he was trying to separate himself from in order to establish his own identity.

  There had to be a better way than the present system of intense peer pressure in high school combined with the stress of academics and college admission, she thought, as she climbed the porch steps and went into the kitchen. A minute or two later Willie’s car turned into the drive and Sara climbed out. “What’s going on?” Sara asked, bursting into the kitchen. “There’s a police car at Tommy’s house.”

  Lucy took a deep breath. “Tommy tried to kill himself.”

  Sara was stunned. Her mouth dropped and she sat staring straight ahead, speechless. Lucy felt like kicking herself for not taking a gentler approach.

  “I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that,” she said, squeezing her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.”