by Sharon Pape
Without argument, my aunt hoisted herself off me and did exactly as I asked. “I want to know what’s going on, Kailyn,” she demanded once she reached the threshold. “Stop treating me like a child for goodness sakes. I won’t fall apart.”
By then I’d gotten to my feet and found the light switch. The overhead lights flashed on, illuminating the awful scene we’d literally stumbled upon. What I hadn’t been able to see in the darkness was the small, round bullet hole in the center of Jim’s forehead.
Tilly screamed long and hard as she struggled to her feet. “Sorry, sorry,” she gasped when she finally came up for air. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m perfectly fine now, really I am. It was the shock of seeing him lying there like that.” She was rocking back and forth on her heels and shivering like a dog in a thunderstorm.
“I know,” I said, putting my arm around her quaking shoulders to steady and comfort her. The contact made me feel a bit better too. “Now I’m going to walk you over to Ronnie’s desk. You can sit in her chair while I call the police.”
“Yes, yes, that’s what I should do,” she mumbled, allowing me to guide her with my arm around what had once been her waist. After she was seated, I took a minute to try to compose myself. Jim was dead, but my heart ached for Elise, his wife and my best friend. For the shock awaiting her and their two boys. It wasn’t as if he’d been suffering through a long illness or was known to have had heart problems. There was nothing in their shared history to prepare them for this.
Once I felt able to speak sensibly, I used the phone on Ronnie’s desk to dial 911.
Although New Camel was too small to have a police force of its own, the county kept two officers here on a split shift. They were headquartered in a small, repurposed bungalow near the center of town. The men were rotated out on a three-month basis, because it was considered too cushy a gig to be permanent. Cushy or not, I’d heard that most of the officers complained of boredom. Until today, the only crime we’d had in the past five years was one pickpocket, one burglary, a counterfeit hundred-dollar bill and the occasional trespasser. I was about to shake things up for sure.
“Officer Curtis, what’s the nature of your emergency?” He sounded like I’d taken him away from something more interesting. I heard a baseball announcer in the background.
“This is Kailyn Wilde,” I said. “I’m calling to report a murder at thirty-five Main Street. It’s our attorney, Jim Hastings.”
“Did you say murder?” He sounded cynical, as though he thought my call was a practical joke. “Are you aware that it’s a crime to file a phony report?”
“I assure you there is a dead body here,” I replied stiffly. I almost said something less polite, but this was about Jim, not me.
Curtis didn’t seem convinced. “You have to stay there until I arrive, you know. If you’re not there, I’ll come looking for you. We don’t take hoaxes lightly.”
“Neither do I, Officer. My aunt and I will be here waiting.” Maybe it was the mention of my aunt that rang true, but Officer Curtis was immediately more civil.
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll be there in five minutes.” It took him two. He arrived with lights whirling and siren blaring as if he’d actually needed to make it through heavy traffic. In this town, heavy traffic was five cars lined up at a red light.
Tilly had recovered, for the most part, by the time Curtis strode in. He looked maybe thirty, stood about five ten with hazel eyes and light brown hair that had probably been haystack blonde when he was a kid. After a brief exchange, during which I learned his first name was Paul, I led him into Jim’s office. He squatted beside the body and felt for a pulse like I had. Apparently satisfied that the victim was indeed beyond help, he stood up and looked around the office before turning to me.
“Why don’t we go back and join your aunt,” he said to my relief. Jim was my first experience with death, minus the trappings a funeral home provides. The initial shock of discovering him had started to fade and with it, the protective numbness. Standing there at the exact spot where he’d died was becoming harder by the moment. At least Elise had been spared that.
“After you called, I alerted county,” he said once we’d rejoined Tilly. “A detective is on his way here along with a forensic unit. I’ll be staying until they arrive to protect the crime scene. The detective will want to take your statements. Have either of you touched anything since you got here?” Tilly blanched, and I had a pretty good idea why. While Curtis and I were in Jim’s office, she’d no doubt gone through Ronnie’s desk drawers. She likes to snoop. She’s the guest who peeks in the medicine chest and, given the opportunity, rifles through personal papers on your desk. To her credit, she doesn’t have a malicious bone in her body, so anything she finds that would be gossip-worthy is never passed to a third party. She’s as true to her own code of ethics as any man or woman of the cloth.
“Yes, we have,” I said to divert his attention from her sudden pallor, “because we had no idea we were walking into a crime scene. We touched the doorknobs for starters.”
Curtis’s lips tugged up in a sheepish smile that almost made me forgive his telephone manners. “Yeah,” he said, “how else would you have gotten in here?” I had a feeling this was his first murder too. “It doesn’t matter,” he went on. “I’m sure the detective is going to take your prints.”
“Are we automatically suspects?” I asked. “Why would I have called you if one of us had killed him?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a killer called the cops to throw suspicion off him- or herself.”
“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t think of that. I guess I wouldn’t make a very good criminal.”
“Look, regardless of whether or not you’re suspects, they’d need your prints in order to exclude them from the forensic results.”
“I like that reason a whole lot better,” I said, though it didn’t completely ease my mind.
We spent a few more minutes in awkward conversation before Detective Max Duggan arrived. He and Curtis acknowledged each other, then the patrolman took care of introducing him to us. Duggan took out a little pad and a pen and jotted down our names. He was a good decade older than Curtis, his no-nonsense buzz cut already seeded with gray. His nose looked as if it had been broken a time or two and left to heal on its own; a scar bisected one shaggy eyebrow. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was a prize fighter or a drill sergeant.
Curtis escorted him to Jim’s office. He returned a few minutes later and said a quick goodbye to us. On his way out, he collided with a gurney piloted by a woman who looked too young for the job. I realized that was something my mother used to say. Twenty-eight and I was sounding like the establishment. Atop the gurney was a folded, black body bag and what I assumed was a forensics case. The woman asked where she could find the crime scene. I pointed the way down to Jim’s office.
“I’m getting hungry,” Tilly whispered after she walked away. “I wonder how much longer they’re going to keep us.” No matter the circumstances, you could depend on my aunt’s appetite. In grief or joy, fear or illness, it was the one constant no matter what life threw her way. I found that crumb of normalcy very welcome. I walked around the desk to give her a hug. Since she was still seated, I had to make do with putting my arms around her shoulders and giving them a squeeze. “I think it’s going to be a while yet,” I said.
“I don’t suppose they’d let us order a pizza?” she asked wistfully. Leave it to my aunt to put a smile in my heart under the worst circumstances. A moment later the detective returned.
“Okay ladies,” he said. “I’m going to ask you some questions so we can try to figure out exactly what happened here.” He consulted his memo pad and then looked up at me. “Ms. Wilde, how about I start with you? We can sit over in that little alcove near the door.”
It wasn’t exactly an invitation I could refuse, so I followed him into the nook that served as a waiting room. He asked how well I’d known Jim and for how long. Why I’d c
ome to the office that afternoon with my aunt. If I was aware of any problems Jim was having, financial or personal. If I’d heard anyone complain about him or his services. I wasn’t much help. Although I’d known him most of my life, in a small town way, it was his wife with whom I was close.
I hadn’t had any direct dealings with him as an attorney, until Bronwen and Morgana died.
“Do you know who worked here with him or for him?
“As far as I know it was only Ronnie, Rhonda Platt. She was his one employee, his girl Friday. She’s been here as far back as I can remember. Jim didn’t have any business partners I know of.”
“Was Rhonda here when you arrived?” Duggan asked.
“No. She usually leaves at four, and we didn’t get here until a little after five.”
He looked up from his pad. “You knew Rhonda wouldn’t be here when you made the appointment?”
I knew exactly what he was thinking, but I could hardly refuse to answer his question on the grounds that it might incriminate me. Just saying those words was sure to raise whatever suspicions he already harbored. “Well yes,” I said with as much poise as I could cobble together. “My aunt and I each run a business here in town and we don’t close until five. Jim is always kind enough to wait for us.”
“I see.” Duggan jotted more notes. “You see anyone else coming or going when you were here?”
“No.”
The detective led me step-by-step from the moment we got out of my car, until my 911 call. When he’d run out of questions, I had one of my own. “Who’s going to tell Elise what’s happened?”
“I’ll be doing that as soon as I leave here.”
“Is it okay if I’m there with her?”
“Afraid not,” he said.
I hadn’t expected his response. “Why not?” I blurted out. “She’s going to need someone there for support.”
“I understand your concern, but until we know more, I have to talk to her alone.”
“You don’t mean talk, do you? You mean question her.”
“I have a job to do,” he said in a don’t-push-it tone of voice. “Now please tell your aunt to come in here.”
Tilly’s complexion had turned a little gray in my absence, whether from nerves or a plummeting glucose level, I couldn’t tell. We switched places. I sat in Ronnie’s chair and she went into the alcove with the detective. Fifteen minutes later, Duggan asked the crime scene investigator to take our prints.
“Detective, do you really think we could commit murder?” Tilly asked in a reedy voice, one hand over her heart as if she was making a pledge to our innocence.
“It’s standard police procedure, for the purpose of exclusion, ma’am,” he told her, echoing Curtis’s words. His tone had become almost kindly. Maybe he was worried that Tilly might have a heart attack and further complicate his evening. Since I knew Tilly better, I suspected that her overriding concern at that moment had more to do with satisfying her hunger and less to do with any cardiac condition.
The fingerprinting was done with a digital scan that was quick and clean. Once it was over, Duggan told us we could go. “But don’t leave town,” he added as we walked out the door. If it was an attempt at humor, an accompanying smile or wink would have helped. On its own, the trite warning had a chilling effect.
“That man’s never going to win any congeniality contests,” Tilly muttered as we walked to my car.
“Congeniality probably isn’t in his job description,” I said, trying to short-circuit any further discussion of his personality. But I could see by Tilly’s expression that she was revving for a comeback. I dove in with a new topic. “Do you want to stop somewhere for a quick dinner?”
“Oh,” she said, her train of thought instantly derailed. “How about that new Italian place—Salami’s or something?”
“I think you mean Saldano’s.” Had this been any other day, I would have been tickled by Tilly’s habit of reading half a word and adlibbing the rest with what she thought it should be. But today wasn’t any other day, and laughter was definitely not an option on my personal menu. In fact I was pretty sure the eating and digesting options were off the table too. Agitation had that effect on me. As I drove the few blocks to the restaurant, I wondered how I’d be able to sit idly by, waiting for the police to find the killer. And how I was going to help Elise through the tragedy that was about to turn her world upside-down.
Chapter 3
After taking Tilly home, I brought Sashkatu back to my house and fed all the cats. Then I drove to Elise’s house. Duggan’s unmarked car was in her driveway. A few neighbors were standing on their front lawns, ostensibly watching their kids play ball in the street, but no doubt also curious about the unfamiliar car and the cut of the man who went into the Harkens’ house. Maybe it was my state of mind, but they looked like vultures waiting for their chance at the carrion.
I parked at the curb, determined to wait for the detective to leave no matter how long it took. Elise had to be in shock. How could she be expected to comfort her boys in such a state? By the time Duggan emerged, I’d been on the brink of trying a spell to hurry him on his way. I was almost disappointed that it didn’t come to that. He saw me waiting and gave me a stiff nod of consent that I didn’t bother to acknowledge. I was out of my car and onto the porch before he’d backed out of the driveway.
The storm door, with its summer screen, was closed, but unlocked. Beyond it, the front door was wide open. I walked in without ringing the bell or knocking and found Elise and her sons huddled together on the sectional in the family room. She looked up at me, her face blank, her eyes dry but unfocused. Shell-shocked was the word that came into my head. The boys, eleven-year-old Noah and fourteen-year-old Zach, were sobbing, their faces red, their eyelids puffy. Noah hiccupped between sobs. I went over to them, knelt on the floor, and stretched my arms around the three of them the best I could.
“Does your family know?” I asked softly. Elise shook her head. “Okay, I’m going to call them. But first, can I get you water or anything?” She shook her head again. I went into the kitchen, found her address book, and started making calls. Her older sister, Gayle, lived two hours away. Her parents were in Florida, her brother in Maine. Gayle was out the door, into her car, and on her way before we hung up. Elise’s brother told me he’d make the more difficult calls to Jim’s family.
Gayle came through the door in record time and the sisters fell into each other’s arms. I left them together in the living room and went back to the boys in the family room. I asked if I could make them something to eat. They both declined. When I suggested having pizza delivered, Noah looked at his older brother for guidance. “All right,” Zach said, “I guess I could eat a slice.”
Noah nodded solemnly. “I guess I could eat a slice too.” The pizza was delivered warm and fragrant. We even talked Elise into eating a few bites. Afterward, I cleaned up the kitchen and hung out with the boys until they were ready for the refuge sleep could provide.
* * *
I got home after midnight, slept fitfully, and was up before dawn. A knot of anxiety had taken up residence in my stomach. There was no point in adding caffeine for it to feed on, so I skipped my morning cup of coffee. It was too early to get ready for work or make phone calls, but keeping busy calmed me. Never a problem when you owned a house. I cleaned out the refrigerator and reorganized the linen closet. But when I looked at the clock, it seemed to have moved one tick forward, two tocks back. I gave up and hit the shower. After toweling dry, I peered at myself in the mirror. I’d be thirty in less than two years, and so far the family recipes were doing their job, holding back any signs of that momentous occasion.
Genetics had dealt me a favorable hand overall. I had my mother’s oval face and high cheekbones and my father’s dark coloring. Bronwen claimed I had her mouth and nose, but my lips were not as full, my nose not as straight. I’d been told more than once that I had an exotic look, which I took to mean I wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It
didn’t bother me. I’d never coveted a beauty queen’s tiara. I combed my hair and pulled it back in a large barrette at the nape of my neck, brushed black mascara on my lashes and blush on my cheeks. Then I shimmied into one of my sundresses and padded back down to the kitchen to force-feed myself breakfast. I settled on an English muffin, because it seemed basic enough for my stomach to tolerate.
By then the cats were up and about. I noticed they were acting a little off, less tolerant of each other, more demanding of my attention. Maybe they were picking up on my edginess. Two of them tried to follow Sashki and me out the door when we were leaving for the shop. Sashkatu swatted at them as he walked out, his tail high in the air in a feline snub.
He and I made the short trek down my walk and across the lane that separated the front of my house from the back of Abracadabra. Once inside, Sashki climbed his custom-built stairway to the windowsill, stretched out on his cushion, and, with a sound somewhere between a purr and a deeper groan of satisfaction, promptly fell asleep. Two years earlier, when he’d started having problems jumping up on things, my mother had hired a well-known carpenter in the area to build him several sets of steps. The distance between the risers was calculated to be a perfect match for the length of his legs. One set stayed in the shop, the other two in the house. They all had wheels and little parking brakes to ensure that they wouldn’t roll when in use on the hardwood. Sashkatu had always been a bit of a diva, but lately if any of the other cats tried to use his steps he literally had a hissy fit.
I’d always loved the shop, which, according to family lore, had been established by a British ancestor well before the Revolutionary War. I didn’t know much more about its history or my family’s, for that matter, because my mind always wandered off when my mother tried to impart it all to me. I was sure there’d be plenty of time to learn the boring details. I certainly never expected to lose most of my links to the past as soon or as suddenly as I did. I guess my mother understood how unpredictable life could be and how easily one could run out of time.
