Murder, She Edited

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  It was time to call it a night. I gathered up the printouts and my notepad and got to my feet, dislodging Calpurnia in the process.

  “Come on, cat,” I said, trying but failing to sound cheerful. “Let’s go to bed. All of this will make much more sense after we’ve had a good night’s rest.”

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as I let myself into the farmhouse the next morning, I started opening windows. It was early, not yet eight, and the day hadn’t had time to heat up. A refreshing breeze brought cool air into the living room and stirred the light coating of dust that had accumulated since the last visit from Tessa’s cleaning service. I sneezed twice on my way to the kitchen.

  I wondered if the murder had occurred there rather than in the middle room. My overactive imagination conjured up a grisly image of an intruder entering through the side door and surprising Rosanna over an evening cup of cocoa.

  There was little sense in speculating about what might have happened. With any luck, either Darlene or I would unearth a more detailed account of the crime. If I was right in thinking that cold cases are never closed, the sheriff’s department would still have a file on Rosanna’s murder. Whether they’d let me take a look at it or not remained to be seen, but that was a problem for another day. My immediate goal was to find the diaries.

  It would have been helpful to know how many of them there were, and useful, too, to have been told who had written them. There had been three people living here at the time of Rosanna’s death. Any one of them might have been in the habit of jotting down her thoughts. I grimaced, struck by another possibility. What if all three Swarthout women had been diligent about recording what went on in their lives? I could be looking at dozens of volumes and a proportionate amount of work before they were in any shape to be posted online.

  Mr. Featherstone had been no help at all when it came to narrowing the search. I couldn’t help but feel he knew more than he was saying, but I’d believed him when he told me he didn’t know where the diaries were kept.

  It was eerily quiet in the old farmhouse kitchen. Only the sound of my shoes on the linoleum disturbed the silence as I strode to the nearest window, the one at a right angle to the door to the porch. I opened it wide and peered out at a view almost identical to what I’d seen the day before from the middle room—a rather depressing vista comprised of the winding dirt driveway, some trees, and an overgrown field.

  As I straightened and went to see what was visible from the back window, I wondered why Mr. Featherstone had insisted on feeding me and escorting me to Swan’s Crossing in person. He could have had that young assistant he’d mentioned show me the way to the farm. Easier still would have been to give me the key to the front door and a set of directions.

  The simple answer was that elderly lawyers are as prone to curiosity as the next person, but he hadn’t seemed all that interested in the place once we arrived, and he certainly hadn’t provided me with any more information about my inheritance than was absolutely necessary.

  Why hadn’t he told me about Rosanna’s murder? He must have known I’d hear about it eventually. He had to be aware of the pertinent details. Why else would he have been so jumpy when we were in the middle room and the kitchen? Given what I’d learned since, it seemed likely he’d been recalling some of the gorier details of the crime, but instead of coming clean about Rosanna’s death, he’d seized upon a convenient excuse to return to Monticello. Had he arranged for someone to phone him after a set amount of time had passed, giving him an out if he decided he needed one?

  As blind dates went, I’d had better.

  Once I had the back window propped open, I took a moment to inhale the faint, pleasant scent of wildflowers. Don’t ask me what kind. I’ve never been any good at identifying flora or fauna.

  This vantage point offered a good view of the farm’s outbuildings. The detached garage with the apartment on its second floor was closest to the farmhouse. A little farther along stood a dilapidated barn and beyond that were some smaller, equally weather-beaten structures that might have been used as anything from chicken coops to storage sheds.

  Mr. Featherstone had been right when he’d said that I wouldn’t be able to see the man-made pond from the house. I could barely make out the hint of a hill, the one he’d described as rising up on the far side of the water. The field in between the house and the hill was horribly overgrown with tall grass and weeds. There were scraggly bushes and stunted trees, as well.

  I thought it likely there were snakes living in the underbrush. Like Indiana Jones, I’m not fond of reptiles. I hadn’t cared for the varieties in my old stomping grounds in Maine, but at least none of them were venomous. New York State can’t make the same claim. The very thought of encountering a copperhead or a rattlesnake was enough to give me the willies.

  Supposedly there are no water moccasins this far north, but my mother used to claim she’d seen them in swampy areas near her childhood home. The odds were good that she’d been talking about the Swarthout farm. Thank goodness I wouldn’t have to go into the field to find the diaries! Wherever they were, it was surely inside the house.

  I turned away from the window to give Tessa’s kitchen my full attention. It was a large, square room. About a third of it jutted out from the rest of the building to connect to the small side porch.

  Going through the cabinets held little appeal. It wasn’t likely they’d conceal anything interesting anyway. Certainly no one would have chosen to hide a diary there. I headed for the door to the middle room, but to reach it I had to pass the sink.

  A sudden flash of memory from that long ago visit to Tessa’s farm stopped me in my tracks. The Swarthouts had kept chickens. There had been one in the sink, newly beheaded and bloody. To a child accustomed to neat grocery store packaging, it had been a ghastly sight. Someone had taken great delight in informing me that the dead bird was slated for scalding and plucking, following which the carcass would be cleaned and cut up so that it could be cooked and eaten. I remember feeling relieved that we hadn’t been invited to stay for supper.

  Had it been Rosanna who’d told me that? Or Estelle? The woman’s identity was obscured by time. I wish I could say the same about the appearance of the chicken carcass. That image returned in living color, as vivid as if I’d encountered it only yesterday.

  Repressing a shudder, I relegated the disturbing picture to a back corner of my mind, where I devoutly hoped it would remain. I left the kitchen and walked rapidly through the middle room, pausing only long enough to open the window.

  When I came to stop in the living room, I hesitated. For about a minute, I seriously considered abandoning the search and leaving. Legally, I had that option, but I couldn’t bring myself to take it. If I backed out now, without even trying to find the dairies, it wouldn’t be just Tessa who’d haunt me. My mother would get into the act as well.

  Then, too, I was a victim of my own curiosity. That alone would have compelled me to continue what I’d started. I had dozens of questions that needed answers, starting with why Tessa Swarthout had chosen me to carry out her wishes.

  I turned in a circle, studying my surroundings. The living room and what I could see of the middle room through the wide archway that separated the two were crowded with furnishings. There were chairs and tables and knickknack shelves, but nary a book of any kind. Should I search under and inside every piece of furniture first, or start elsewhere in the house?

  The choice wasn’t hard to make. I reasoned that since diaries are meant to be private, they would most likely be found in one of the bedrooms. I started with the one across the entry hall. I was thorough, even looking under the mattress and behind the bureau. In the bureau itself, I found handkerchiefs embroidered with Tessa’s initials, confirming that this had been her room.

  She appeared to have left everything she owned behind except a diary. A pretty tortoiseshell grooming set, consisting of comb, brush, nail file, hand mirror, and hair receiver, sat on top of the bureau next to t
he photograph I’d examined on my earlier visit. There was also a bottle of My Sin perfume. In the adjacent bathroom, I found soap, toothpaste, and toothbrushes right where they’d been left on the day Tessa and Estelle walked out.

  I explored the back room next, finding similar evidence of occupation but no diaries. I felt fairly certain it had been used by Estelle, but she’d done little to personalize it. The clothes were neatly stored, as were a variety of cosmetics, but as I’d already noticed, there wasn’t so much as a fashion magazine or a copy of Reader’s Digest in sight, let alone a diary or any letters.

  How do people exist without reading? The very idea boggled my mind.

  I retraced my steps and opened the door to the stairwell. The steps leading up to the second floor were as narrow and steep as I remembered and the single bare lightbulb overhead didn’t do much to dispel the shadows. It was a relief to reach the top.

  The number of upstairs bedrooms surprised me, until I remembered that the Swarthouts had taken in summer boarders. I started at the front of the house, following a narrow stretch of hallway until it opened out into a duplicate of the entryway directly below.

  The bedroom situated above the living room had been used by Tessa’s stepmother. There was a pendant with an R on it in her jewelry box. She’d owned plain but expensive clothing, preferred using a powder puff to more modern makeup, and didn’t have a single photograph on display, not even one of her late husband. A quick but thorough search of the dresser drawers and an ornately carved hope chest turned up nothing of interest.

  Stymied, I stood with my hands on my hips and glared at the four-poster bed. Either none of the Swarthout women had been inclined to keep souvenirs, or they had managed, after all, to carry away some of their personal belongings. If they’d returned or sent someone else in to retrieve certain items, it seemed odd that they’d leave clothes and toiletries behind, but the only other explanation I could come up with was that the police had confiscated every letter and paper in the house. I thought I might be able to find out, since I’m friendly with several people who work in local law enforcement.

  In the meantime, I had more rooms to search.

  There was a door to my right as I left the master bedroom, opposite a window that looked out over the roof of the front porch. I opened it and took one step up a flight of stairs that clearly led to an attic before retreating in haste. Even though it wasn’t yet noon, the day had already begun to heat up. It was too darned hot to contemplate exploring under the eaves. I’d leave that project for the next time I visited, assuming I didn’t find the diaries this time around. If the weather didn’t break before then, I’d have to remember to bring along a portable fan and a couple of bottles of water, too. Heat prostration is no joke.

  The corner room across from the master bedroom contained more of Estelle’s belongings. After a moment’s thought, I remembered that Rosanna’s murder had taken place at the end of the tourist season. If family members had moved downstairs for the summer, to make more rooms available to boarders, September would have been the time they reclaimed those they used during the rest of the year. Estelle must have been in the process of moving from one to the other.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing resembling a diary in this bedroom either. I was beginning to be discouraged.

  I headed back along the narrow hallway, stopping to investigate another room that opened off that short stretch. It was furnished, but otherwise empty, cleaned out at the end of the season. Where the hall opened out onto the second floor landing, I found two more bedrooms in the same condition and a bathroom well stocked with towels but little else.

  By the time I went back downstairs, I was ready to call it a day. I was also, to be truthful, a little spooked. It wasn’t that I’d been expecting the bogeyman to jump out at me, and I certainly didn’t think Rosanna’s murderer would return to claim another victim after sixty-odd years, but being alone in an empty farmhouse was creepy. My old home in rural Maine was off the beaten path, but this remote location was even more isolated.

  It didn’t help that so much mystery surrounded the place. I could understand why Tessa and her sister never wanted to live in their home again, but it still didn’t make sense to me that they’d leave all their possessions behind. That’s the sort of thing you expect to encounter in a horror novel, where the characters flee from a ghostly encounter and fear they’ll be driven mad if they ever return.

  I chuckled at my own flight of fancy. I wasn’t worried about ghosts or madmen or even snakes—not really—but it did bother me that I couldn’t figure out why Tessa had been so insistent on having those diaries published.

  There was something off about this whole scenario. If the diaries were hidden, why hadn’t Tessa left directions on how to find them? If she’d left them someplace obvious, then what had happened to them? Had they disappeared early on, perhaps confiscated by the police? Or had someone else, for some unknown reason, taken them away at a later date?

  That thought brought me back to one of the questions Mr. Featherstone had refused to answer: Who inherited the farm if I failed to fulfill the conditions set by Tessa’s will? The person she’d named as residuary heir might have a pretty compelling motive to make off with the diaries before I could find them.

  I drove home in a contemplative frame of mind.

  Chapter Nine

  That evening I settled in at the desk in my upstairs office for what I hoped would be a long, uninterrupted stretch spent editing a new short story from a repeat client. He’d sold an earlier story I helped him with and was hoping lightning would strike twice. Before I could get started, someone knocked on my front door. I have a doorbell, but whoever was there ignored it in favor of furious pounding.

  My first thought was that one of my neighbors had an emergency. I was halfway down the stairs before it occurred to me that if that were the case, they’d be calling my name, or perhaps shouting for help, as well as knocking. They’d probably be ringing the doorbell, as well. When the hammering abruptly ceased, only to be resumed with greater force a moment later, I continued my descent at a much slower pace.

  Perhaps it was my imagination, but the sound seemed more angry than frantic. I took the precaution of double-checking to make sure my security system was engaged before I peeked through the peephole.

  It was nearly eight o’clock. It was also July, so it wasn’t yet dark. Unfortunately, my house faces east and my porch light wasn’t turned on. The figure on the other side of the door was partially obscured by evening shadows, but there was something familiar about her.

  My visitor was definitely a woman. From what little I could make out in the gloaming, she was of middling height and average weight. Her hair, color indeterminate but not white, gray, or blond, was mid-length. It floated out from her face every time she threw herself against the door panels. She was using both fists to beat on them.

  Instinctively, I drew back. She could launch such assaults all night long and that door wouldn’t give, but what if she tried to gain entry by some other means? It was obvious she wasn’t in a rational state of mind. If she broke a window, it would set off alarms, but she’d have a few minutes’ grace period before anyone had time to respond. Unwilling to take chances, I headed for the nearest phone and called the police.

  A patrol car pulled up in front of my house a few minutes later. The woman didn’t notice. She kept banging on my door right up until the moment Ellen Blume, a Lenape Hollow police officer I happen to know quite well, tapped her on the shoulder and asked her what she thought she was doing.

  I didn’t plan on joining them outside, but I decided it was safe to turn on the porch light. Besides, I was curious about the woman’s identity.

  As soon as I flicked the switch, I recognized her as the person who’d accosted me in the grocery store parking lot, the woman who’d been upset because she’d found two typographical errors in the latest Illyria Dubonnet romance and blamed me for not catching them before the novel was published.
r />   “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” I muttered under my breath. I keyed in the code to deactivate my security system and opened the door.

  “You!” she shrieked the moment she caught sight of me. “You were here all along!”

  “Yes, I was,” I admitted from my relatively safe position on the other side of the screen door. “And if you’d rung the doorbell like a civilized human being and been willing to engage in a rational conversation, I’d have been happy to talk to you.”

  Yes, I was exaggerating just a bit. I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but I would have listened to what she had to say. Probably. On the other hand, if she’d had the same look in her eyes that she did now, one that suggested she’d just as soon slit my throat as chat with me, I might have been even quicker to call the cops.

  “Do you know this woman, Ms. Lincoln?” Since she was on duty, Ellen was excessively formal in addressing me.

  I summarized my earlier encounter with my irate visitor. Had it only been the previous day? A lot had happened since then.

  Ellen stopped scribbling in her notebook. “All this fuss is over a novel?”

  “This woman is under the mistaken impression that I’m to blame for making her idol’s book less than perfect.” I faced my detractor directly. “I’m only going to say this once more. I’m a beta reader for Ms. Dubonnet. I read early drafts of her work because she’s a personal friend. I’ll willingly take the blame for errors that slip through in any material I’m paid to edit, but I read her books as a favor. They go through many more drafts before they’re published and I have nothing to do with those. You’re blaming the wrong person.”

  If I’d thought it would make any impression, I’d have tried to convince her that, really, no one was to blame. I could understand a reader being upset if there were obvious mistakes on every page, but two little typos? The odds of human error being as high as they are, I’d call that pretty darned good.