Trick or Deceit

by Shelley Freydont

  The sisters looked at each other.”

  “No, we didn’t,” Edna said.

  “They haven’t located her car?” Ida asked.

  “I didn’t see it. And no one mentioned it. I should have asked.”

  “Well, just write it down, you’ll remember to ask later.”

  Liv wrote it down. “There’s something even stranger.”

  “Yes?” the sisters said together.

  “They don’t have her shoes.”

  “Her shoes?” Edna said. “Why not? Did they lose them?”

  “No, they . . .” Liv must be tired because she felt the urge to laugh, and nothing today had been the least bit funny. “The police took the wrong shoes. They found shoes next to Lucille’s feet and bagged them as evidence, but they—they—they belonged to Lizzie Borden.” She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Edna cracked out a laugh. “But what happened to Lucille’s shoes?”

  Liv stopped laughing. “We don’t know.”

  “Do you think she was mugged for her shoes?” Ida asked, wide eyed, and pulled her feet under her chair. “They do that kind of thing in the city.”

  “I doubt if that would happen in Celebration Bay,” Edna said. “And thieves usually steal those expensive running shoes.” She looked thoughtful. “Oh dear, you don’t think it was a symbolic gesture, the killer took her shoes and substituted the shoes of a murderess to leave a message?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Liv said, impressed. “Lizzie purportedly killed her parents with an ax. But who would Lucille have killed?”

  “She would never. The idea.” Ida hmmphed her disgust. “Unless she killed someone’s dreams.” She looked at Liv.

  “You mean maybe Ernie blamed her for ‘killing his dream’ of paying his back taxes?”

  “It sounds senseless when you say it, but motives have been even sillier than that.”

  “Ida’s right. And this sounds like a crime of passion, not sense,” Edna said.

  “True.”

  Ida pointed to Liv’s notebook. “I think you’d better start a different grid for possible suspects and their motives.”

  It was a tribute to the Zimmerman sisters’ tenacity that Liv didn’t argue. When she had first moved here and was thrust into an investigation, she’d fought her involvement all the way. Now everyone in Celebration Bay just seemed to expect it from her. She planned all the major events in town. They came to her for all the problems associated with the events and more. They expected her to solve problems—all problems.

  Even the sheriff consulted her.

  The town somehow decided that since Liv was from Manhattan—which everyone considered the capital of murder and mayhem—she would have the right expertise to catch a crook. Even though Liv had never even witnessed a robbery, much less a murder, in her entire life in Manhattan.

  As far as murders, Celebration Bay seemed to be holding its own.

  “Liv?”

  Liv turned to a new page. “First, let’s make a timetable of events. That may eliminate some suspects to begin with.”

  “Do they know what time Lucille was killed?” Edna asked.

  “Not that they’re telling me,” Liv said.

  Ida shook her head. “I just can’t believe someone would kill her. She was always so nice.”

  Edna rolled her eyes at that one. “She was always nice to us. But I think her husband might have a different story.”

  “Carson? That sweet man, how could anyone be mean to him?”

  Edna huffed out air. “It’s a good thing you were an elementary school teacher.”

  Ida nodded. “It’s important to teach the fundamentals of scholarship and life in the formative years.”

  Liv smiled. She loved her landladies. Wacky, wonderful, compassionate people, not afraid of sticking their noses in places some people would say they didn’t belong.

  “Liv is trying to make a timetable, Ida.”

  “Yes, how can we help, dear? We didn’t go to the festivities.”

  “Mainly just help me think.” Liv thought back. “The award ceremony started around six thirty and took about a half hour, max. Then the finalists and the judges and Amanda Marlton-Crosby and the mayor and a few others stood around talking after that, say seven ten. Ernie got angry and knocked into Lucille as he walked away. But his anger didn’t seem to be directed at her, just at everyone in general.”

  “Aha,” Edna said. “And do we know where Ernie went?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do,” Liv said. “He went off to McCready’s. Ted, Chaz, and I went over for a burger and he was still there, complaining to whomever would listen. He left a little after eight, I think. And I have no idea where he went after that.”

  “What about Lucille?”

  “Pretty soon after Ernie left, Amanda said she had to go, she had guests at home. The mayor offered to walk her to her car but she said no, that her husband was meeting her. Which he did. Then pretty soon after that, the mayor asked Lucille if he could walk her to her car.

  “And she thanked him but said Carson was picking her up, and then she said, ‘Oh there he is,’ and ran off in the opposite direction of Amanda.”

  “Carson,” Edna breathed.

  “Surely not,” Ida said.

  “Well, Ted pointed out a salient fact. We heard her say ‘There’s Carson,’ and point in the direction of the sidewalk, but neither of us actually saw him.” Liv frowned. “I don’t know if anyone else saw him. I’m sure Bill must have asked the others.”

  “Well, you’d better ask him. Doesn’t pay to make assumptions about what other people might or might not do.” Edna cut a look at her sister. “Something that some people should remember.”

  “But why would she say she saw him, if she didn’t?” Liv mused.

  “Maybe she thought she saw him but didn’t,” Ida said.

  “Or maybe she was just trying to get away from the mayor,” Edna said.

  Ida tittered, then clamped her hand over her mouth.

  “Or,” Liv said, “she was meeting someone who was not her husband and didn’t want anyone else to know.”

  Chapter Seven

  Neither sister had an idea about who Lucille might have been meeting. They knew about her liaisons, but like everyone else, they were loath to talk about them, even to Liv, whom they had goaded into investigating in the first place. Maybe it was just a case of no one wanting to cast the first stone.

  Liv had several pages of notes but nothing that she sensed would lead them out of total guesswork. And that was the only conclusion they’d reached when Liv promised to meet them at nine forty-five the next morning for church.

  Liv was so tempted to say, “I’m sleeping in.” She needed the sleep. She wanted to be fresh and alert for Jonathon Preston when he arrived next weekend. The week ahead was bound to be long hours and little rest, and it was hard to wow anybody with your proposal when you were cracking giant yawns. And besides, she wouldn’t mind him seeing her at her best.

  But she also thought maybe the contemplative nature of a sermon and a few hymns would restore some equilibrium. And then there would always be gossip at the Fellowship hour. She could restore her spirit and get a take on the climate of the community after Lucille’s death.

  “I’ll be there with bells on,” Liv said, and stifled a yawn.

  She waited while Whiskey made a quick round of the garden, then they went inside, where Liv tossed her notes on her desk and went to take a shower and Whiskey made a beeline to his plaid doggie bed in the corner of Liv’s bedroom.

  • • •

  The next morning, Liv was dressed and ready and drinking a cup of coffee when she heard the sisters come out to the garage.

  She lifted her coat off the back of her kitchen chair and slipped it on as she headed for the door. Whiskey padded up to her
, looking expectant.

  “Just church, fella. I won’t be long. Stay.”

  It was pretty cold for early October, overcast and bleak. Last year around this time she had lived in Celebration Bay for two months and was up to her eyeballs in damage control. And a year later here she was again performing triage. Murder had a way of impinging on one’s best-laid plans.

  While Liv waited for Edna to back the Zimmermans’ old Buick out of the garage, she thought about Lucille Foster’s shoes. They were distinctive with the trademark Louboutin red soles. Liv had actually crawled to the back of her closet looking for a pair of her old Manhattan heels this morning. But when she’d found them, then backed out to try them on, she realized how inappropriate to life in Celebration Bay they were.

  And how totally inappropriate they were for an award ceremony in the park. Lucille had been even more overdressed than Janine. And Janine took delight in putting everyone else to shame, wardrobe wise as well everything else.

  So Liv had kicked the offending heels to the back of the closet where they belonged and chosen a wider, lower, more comfortable Sunday shoe instead.

  But she kept thinking about Lucille’s shoes. Perhaps she had just come from some dressy affair and hadn’t had time to change before the award ceremony. Or she was planning on going somewhere directly after the ceremony. With her husband? Or with someone else?

  She’d have to ask Bill what he’d found out from Carson Foster. On one level it was none of Liv’s business, but on another . . . She’d learned early in her career that it paid to be aware of every possible snafu and have a secondary plan in place.

  Liv climbed into the backseat, and a few minutes later they were pulling into the parking lot across the street from the First Presbyterian Church.

  Pastor Schorr was greeting his flock at the front door, dressed in his surplice. His light hair shone like a lamp of welcome against the gray day. The pastor was a young man with a booming voice, who, in addition to his pastoral duties, had founded and ran the community center that was the object of the current fund-raiser.

  People were eager to get inside and the welcomes were quick, though a couple of people who saw Liv and the Zimmermans crossing the street lagged a little, probably hoping to hear some dirt. Liv was sure there would be plenty at Fellowship hour, but she would be listening for it, not handing it out.

  Pastor Schorr took her hand and patted it like an older and wise man, but the look in his eye was more “here we go again.” Liv smiled back at him and kept walking, straight to the pew where they always sat, where the Zimmerman family had been sitting for generations. BeBe was waiting for them and scooted over a little to make more room.

  “I was beginning to wonder if you all were coming. Everybody’s talking about the vandalism over at Barry’s Museum of Yankee Horrors. I wouldn’t want to be Ernie Bolton right now.”

  Liv scooched in beside her. “What are they saying about him?”

  “That he was a sore loser and broke in and destroyed Barry’s exhibits.”

  Liv wasn’t surprised. “What about the other thing?”

  BeBe looked around and moved closer. “The verdict is split. Some say he did it, some not. Of the dids, some are saying it was probably an accident and he should come forward.”

  “Has anybody seen him?”

  BeBe shrugged. “I doubt he’ll be coming out in public for a while.”

  The choir came in singing “For the Beauty of the Earth.”

  As the music died away, and scripture was read, Liv wondered if Pastor Schorr would mention the death of Lucille Foster. As far as Liv knew, the Fosters weren’t members of the congregation, but in spite of the hordes of tourists that visited each year, Celebration Bay was a small town through and through.

  He talked about the fullness of harvest and the earth sleeping to replenish itself, and it seemed somehow appropriate, even though he didn’t mention Lucille by name. Liv listened intently, ordered her mind not to wander, concentrated not to let her eye rove over the others and wonder if one of them was a murderer.

  The morning service ended with a hopeful recessional, then the congregation broke into conversation as they headed for the doors or down to the Fellowship room for coffee hour.

  Liv didn’t even have to ask if they were staying. Liv and BeBe followed the two sisters down the stairs, where Edna and Ida headed straight for the refreshment table and Ruth Benedict, the town’s most voracious, and sometimes most vicious, gossiper.

  Liv and BeBe exchanged looks and decided to fortify themselves with coffee and cookies before joining the conversation.

  By the time they made their way over to the ladies, two other ladies had joined them and were listening intently to Ruth.

  “Open marriage,” Ruth said and raised her eyebrows. “Well, at least on her side.”

  “I never,” said one of the other churchgoers.

  “Well, she did. And more than once.” Ruth puffed up, sending a wave of navy blue rayon across her ample bust. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one of her . . . men . . . did her in.”

  “Why on earth?” Edna said.

  Edna of course didn’t actually need to be told why a person might kill his or her lover; she may have never married and had lived in Celebration Bay all her life, but she knew what was what. No, Edna was priming Ruth’s pump.

  Ruth shrugged. “Jealousy? Maybe she was trying to break it off . . .”

  “You don’t think maybe Carson . . . ?”

  “It’s totally possible. Maybe he just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “I don’t believe she was that bad. They always looked so happy together. And they were very generous in support of the children’s clothing drive, the food pantry, and a dozen other charities.”

  Ruth snorted. “Maybe her charity should have begun at home.”

  “Ruth Benedict,” Ida said, scandalized. “Remember where you are.”

  “I’m not saying anything that everybody else doesn’t know. But the one thing I can tell you is my house looks out over Lakeside Road. And more than once I’ve seen Lucille’s car going up and coming back, sometimes late at night.”

  “So what?” Edna said. “The Lakeside Diner is up there, and Dexter Kent’s nursery and—”

  “And those tacky cabins at the fish camp. You know what kind of shenanigans go on there.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never been there,” Edna said icily.

  “Well, you know it by reputation. I see Chaz Bristow’s jeep up there all the time, day and nighttime, too.” Ruth cut a look toward Liv. “I’ve seen your car drive up that ways a few times.”

  “Ruth, everyone uses that road.”

  “It’s not a direct route to anywhere.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been up to Dexter’s several times. The event office conducts a lot of business with him. And I’ve eaten at the diner and I’ve even been to the fish camp, for fishing. That’s all there is to it.”

  “If you say so.” Ruth didn’t sound like she believed it. “But Liv, we all know what’s going on between you and Chaz. And it’s not just fishing.”

  “What? There’s nothing.”

  “You don’t have to answer to her, Liv,” Edna said. “That’s insulting, Ruth Benedict.”

  “I’m just saying what I saw.”

  “And you have a dirty mind,” Ida added.

  “Chaz didn’t deny it,” Ruth said smugly.

  “Hmmph,” Ida said. “I doubt if Chaz has ever talked to you.”

  Liv was moved to hear the sisters stick up for her. Even though there really wasn’t anything going on between Liv and Chaz, or Liv and anybody, she was still learning how small towns could be. And she’d been very careful not to give people anything to talk about. Not that anything like the truth would stop people like Ruth Benedict, a woman with way too much time on her hands.

&nb
sp; “Did you see anyone on Friday night?” Liv hadn’t meant to ask, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Ruth put a finger to her chin. It didn’t fool any of them. Ruth knew exactly what she was going to say. “Well, since I didn’t come into town for the ceremony, I saw everyone who came and went. I saw Amanda Marlton drive down to town in her Land Rover, but I didn’t see her drive home again.” She raised both eyebrows and leaned closer to her audience. “But there was a silver Mercedes that came back late and pulled into the drive.”

  Liv didn’t understand how she could make so much innuendo with so few actual facts.

  “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about,” Edna said. “It’s dark by four thirty. How can you tell what cars go by?”

  “Because,” Ruth said smugly. “The county put in streetlamps just below my house. I can see every car that passes like it was daylight. And . . .” Her expression turned sly. “I wouldn’t ordinarily say anything . . .”

  Ha, thought Liv.

  “Ha,” said Edna.

  “But I did see Chaz’s old jeep follow the Mercedes up a while later.”

  Liv’s stomach clenched. She wanted to say, “well not with me,” but that was nobody’s business.

  “Ladies,” Pastor Schorr said brightly, breaking into the group. “Such a lovely group of worshippers this morning.”

  Ruth smiled and nodded. “Oh, Pastor, I’m glad you stopped by. I wanted to talk to you about the poinsettia sale. I have a few ideas.” She deftly moved him away from the group. Or maybe he had done the moving. Liv wasn’t sure.

  The other two women wandered off.

  “Well,” Edna said. “Spread out and see if you hear anything meaningful.”

  Liv and BeBe stayed together and mingled. But the most they heard was surprise at Amanda Marlton-Crosby’s generous donation and a quick reference of “isn’t it a shame about Lucille Foster.”

  It had been a singularly disappointing morning. And embarrassing. As they got ready to leave, Liv pulled BeBe into an empty hallway.

  “Does eveyone think Chaz and I are having an affair?”