“Sometimes he calls himself ‘Atticus.’ But you call him ‘Kit.’ Why?”
“Like me, he was named after a famous character in a novel: Atticus Finch. His mother’s favorite novel, in fact. To Kill A Mockingbird. ‘Kit’ is a nickname.”
“I’ve never seen a mockingbird, have you?”
“I saw one in Central Park a few years ago.”
He finished his bite of raspberry crumb bar. “I’d never kill a mockingbird. There shouldn’t be a book that tells you how to do it.”
I smiled and said nothing.
Theo looked out the window of my SUV at the passing mixture of farmland and woods. “Will the Lake Lady mind that we’re stopping by her house? I don’t like when anyone visits my cottage without telling me first.” Theo rented a small riverside house called Crow Cottage. I was one of the few people who had ever been welcomed as a guest.
“Few of us like a pop-in,” I agreed. “But Kit and I want to make sure she’s okay. I haven’t been able to get ahold of her for the past twenty-four hours. I’m a little worried.”
“You worry too much. My dad says people have to learn how to take care of themselves. That’s what I do.”
“And you do a good job of it. But all of us need help now and then.” I slowed down as the road leading to Leticia’s house came into view. I hoped the first thing we spotted when we pulled up her gravel drive was that purple scooter.
Instead, I immediately saw multiple cats lazing in the late-morning sun on Leticia’s front lawn. I needed to call my aunt as soon as I got to the store. The other thing I saw was a blue car parked near the pebbled walkway that led to the log home. Did Leticia have a visitor?
“Look at the wild turkeys!” Theo pointed out the open window.
I had barely braked to a stop before Theo jumped out and ran toward the turkeys on the lawn. His approach caused them to move away. A wave of gobbles filled the air.
Kit arrived a moment after I did. He got out of his car and looked around. “Don’t see any scooter. Maybe she traded it in for this Ford Focus.”
“I doubt she suddenly acquired a car. Someone is here.” I joined Kit as he looked through the closed windows of the car. The upholstered seats were empty. “And it doesn’t explain where Leticia’s scooter is. Maybe she parked it behind the house.”
“Before we go snooping around her property, let’s knock on the door. This way we’ll also be able to find out who her visitor is.”
We walked up to the log home, bypassing three cats on the porch steps.
Kit looked in the front window. Those closed plaid curtains revealed nothing. Next, he stepped to the front door and knocked. “Ms. Clark, are you home? It’s the sheriff’s department.”
I bit my lip. If Leticia was home, his announcement was sure to spook her.
While he knocked again, I glanced over the side of the porch in time to see Theo trail after the wild turkeys. All of them seemed headed for the beehives in the back field. Theo must have spotted an interesting bird, because he stopped and raised his binoculars.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” Kit said in a loud voice.
“Maybe we should go inside to make certain she isn’t sick or hurt.” I grabbed the doorknob and turned. It was locked. “That’s funny. It wasn’t locked yesterday.”
“Maybe you locked it when you left.”
“No. I made certain not to. I didn’t want to lock her out of her own house. After all, I have no idea if she even carries around a key.” I jiggled the doorknob. It wouldn’t budge.
Kit gave one last attempt at the door. “If her door is now locked, she must have returned to her home since your visit yesterday afternoon.”
He and I walked down the porch steps, accompanied by a chorus of meows.
“Or someone else came here and that person locked the door. Maybe the driver of that blue Ford.” I turned to face the log home. “What if he’s in there with her right now, waiting for us to leave? We have to do something. None of this feels normal.”
“Marlee, you barely know the woman. How can you speculate on what is or isn’t normal about this situation?”
I pointed at the log exterior of her home. “There are no dried mulberries on the walls. Instead, the boxes are piled where I left them. She was desperate for me to order the berries because she wanted to put them around her doors and windows. For protection, she said. Yet she hasn’t glued one berry up there.”
“It rained most of yesterday.”
“But the rain stopped by the time I delivered them. The sun was out by five.” I glanced up at the blue sky. “And it’s been sunny all morning. Besides, she has a covered front porch and a screened back porch. Even if it had rained, she would have been able to get mulberries around most of her doors and windows. Something prevented her from doing so. Or someone.”
Kit raised an eyebrow. “Felix Bonaventure?”
“It’s possible.”
“Marlee! Kit! Come here!” Theo waved at us. He had made his way about forty yards in his pursuit of the wild turkeys. I assumed he’d spotted a rare bird.
Kit and I walked over to him. “What’s up?” Kit asked.
“There was an eastern screech owl in those trees.” Theo nodded at a stand of birch. “I tried to follow the owl with my binoculars, but it flew away. Then I looked at those wooden boxes in the field. The ones you said were beehives. But I didn’t see any bees.”
“It’s late in the year,” I said. “That’s to be expected.”
“Maybe the bees are gone because someone shot an arrow into the hive,” he suggested.
Kit and I looked at the hives. Even without binoculars, we saw an arrow sticking out of one of them.
“There’s an arrow in the ground, too. Not really in the ground though. It’s stuck in something.” Theo looked nervous. “I think it’s a body.”
“Oh no,” I cried.
The three of us ran into the field. As we neared the wooden hives, we saw a body lying faceup in a clump of tall grass. An arrow stuck out of the man’s chest. Blood stained the shirt around it. Kit and I knelt beside the body. Even though the person was clearly dead, Kit felt for a pulse.
I immediately scanned the field and surrounding woods. If the person had recently been killed, was the murderer still on the property? Were we being watched? And where was Leticia?
Kit pulled out his cell phone to call the sheriff’s department. With a heavy heart, I once more looked down at the dead man.
“Do you know who it is, Marlee?” Theo asked as he stood over us.
“Yes.” I gave a deep sigh. “His name is Felix Bonaventure.”
I had no idea who killed him with an arrow. Nor did I know where Leticia the Lake Lady was. One thing I knew for certain. Despite his charmed name, Felix’s good fortune had run out.
Chapter Six
I soon found myself surrounded by police, cats, and wild turkeys. Neither the agitated animals nor the police made the situation pleasant. However, Theo seemed content to while away the time observing the noisy birds. I wished I was as easily distracted.
Although Kit made his first call to the sheriff’s department, he followed up by notifying the state police. No surprise there. The two departments often worked together. And Kit’s brother-in-law, Greg Trejo, also happened to be a detective for the state police.
But the arrival of Gene Hitchcock, Oriole Point’s police chief, did surprise me. Leticia lived near the county line, which wasn’t under the legal jurisdiction of my village. Then again, Oriole County saw few murders, this past year notwithstanding. When one did occur, maybe it became an “all hands on deck” situation for local law enforcement.
And every state police and sheriff’s car looked to be on the property. The cats and turkeys didn’t know in which direction to run as officers searched the field and surrounding woods. I hoped they didn’t find another dead body, especially one with orange hair.
An ambulance came for the body while Greg Trejo questioned me. We had become friends ov
er the summer. But when Greg was in police mode, he conveyed all the warmth of a menacing robot, despite his good looks. I no longer took it personally. I had just finished relating my encounters with Leticia and Felix Bonaventure when Chief Hitchcock joined us.
“Do you mind if Marlee goes over all this with me?” he asked Greg.
Greg nodded. “Go ahead.”
Even though it was still morning, I felt drained and exhausted. I’d seen too many dead bodies this year. And my legs needed a rest. If you included all the hiking I did earlier at the state park, I had been standing for hours.
I sat down on the grass and looked up at the police chief. “My legs are tired.”
“I hear Leticia approached you in the village on Saturday morning,” Hitchcock began.
Kit joined us before I could reply. “I called the judge to request an affidavit for a search warrant. He just emailed me the signed warrant.”
“Good.” Greg’s Vulcan-like expression grew even steelier. “This may be easy to solve. A man murdered on the property of a highly eccentric woman. One with a past.”
“Killed with a bow and arrow,” Kit added. “An eccentric choice of weapon.”
“Don’t rush to judgment, boys,” Chief Hitchcock said. “Especially with what’s going on this week at the health fair. Have you learned anything about this Bonaventure fellow? He must have had ID on him.” He gestured at the Ford. “Anything in the car?”
“It’s a rental from the airport in Grand Rapids,” Kit answered. “And the car is clean. Nothing in it save for the rental-car registration. Thankfully, he gave Marlee his business card yesterday, which had his Philadelphia address. We called authorities there and asked them to search his home. Marlee also remembered he said he was staying at a Hampton Inn in South Haven. We sent a car to search his room.”
“Did they find anything?” Hitchcock asked.
“Heard back from the officers about ten minutes ago. Nothing in his room except for several changes of clothes.”
“Any sort of device?” Hitchcock looked frustrated. “Computer, iPad?”
“Nothing. Not even a cell phone.”
In this day and age, that seemed as bizarre as living without electricity.
“To make things more suspicious,” Kit continued, “there isn’t a scrap of paper in the car or in the room to let us know what he did for a living.”
I thought back to how he looked like a character from The Godfather. “A hit man, maybe,” I suggested.
The three men looked down at me with surprised expressions. They’d momentarily forgotten I was sitting right below them on the grass.
“If so, he doesn’t appear to have been a good one,” Kit answered.
“Maybe you two should go inside while I talk to Marlee,” Hitchcock said.
“What does the health fair have to do with any of this?” I asked after Kit and Greg left with several other officers.
“We don’t know. Maybe nothing.” Hitchcock crouched beside me, not looking happy about getting down to my level. Our police chief not only bore the intimidating name of a famous director of suspense movies, he also boasted a six-foot-five frame and too many pounds. I doubted he’d be comfortable in that position for long.
“And you’re not going to tell me anyway.”
“Correct.” He bit back a smile.
I looked over as the officers entered the house. “How did they get in? Do the police have a special gadget to break locks?”
“Don’t worry about the lock. Tell me what happened with Mr. Bonaventure and Leticia.”
I repeated my conversation with Leticia on Saturday, Felix Bonaventure’s visit to my store yesterday, and my delivery of the dried mulberries later that afternoon. After a moment’s hesitation, I admitted how I’d opened her front door to let the cats in—then walked in myself.
He didn’t seem any more fazed by this confession than Kit. Maybe both men expected me to bend the rules. “I didn’t stay more than a minute or two. I took a quick look around her living room, then left. No one seemed to be home, and her scooter was gone. Like it is now.”
“Did either Mr. Bonaventure or Leticia appear threatening to you?”
“But her real name isn’t Leticia, is it? It’s Ellen.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t answer mine.” I’d grown up with Gene Hitchcock as the town’s police chief. My aunt was his wife’s best friend and we’d celebrated more than a few holidays together over the years. I felt comfortable enough to push back a little. “I have reason to believe she went by at least one other name: Ellen Clark. And that she served time in prison for murder.”
He shook his head. “Now I understand what Dean was doing in the police station yesterday. He was snooping around. Probably at your bidding.”
“Getting Andrew and Dean to do my bidding is like herding cats.” Four cats took this moment to prove my point by streaking past us. “The only time they’re amenable is if I ask them to do something they can later gossip about.”
“You told Dean to go through our filing cabinets?” Hitchcock asked in a warning voice.
“Of course not.” Thank God he didn’t know Dean hacked into the police computers. “I sent Dean to see what he could find out from his mother. I had no idea she’d gone off to the health fair. What Dean got up to in her absence is none of my doing.”
“Whatever he did, I bet it involves the discovery of Leticia’s real name.”
“True. He did learn her married name: Ellen Clark. And finding out she was in prison for murder seems worth a little subterfuge.”
He hesitated, as if weighing his next words. “The woman paid her debt to society long ago. I don’t want her past to become a topic of nasty gossip.”
“Neither do I. But she came to me for help because she believed her life was in danger. She worried the ghost was in danger, too. Whoever the ghost is. And she talked about shadow people. It sounded like paranoia to me. A paranoia that now seems warranted.” I waved a hand at the field when Felix’s body had been found. “She’s gone missing and a man is found dead on her property. With a bow and arrow, no less, which is disturbing.”
“Bow-hunting season kicks off soon. There could be a homicidal hunter in the area.”
“I doubt it. And the police lab needs to ascertain what kind of wood the arrow was made from. If it’s mulberry wood . . .” I let my voice trail off.
Hitchcock narrowed his eyes at me. “Explain.”
“She thought all things mulberry would protect her from danger. Especially from this person she believed threatened her. Not just the berries either. Objects made from mulberries.”
“Like arrows?”
“Yes.” I recalled my conversation with Leticia. I had mentioned mulberry arrows and wands in jest. Did I give her the idea of acquiring mulberry arrows? Or did she already have the arrows in her possession? And had she used them to protect herself?
The same idea must have occurred to Chief Hitchcock. “If she was obsessed with mulberries and felt threatened, it’s possible the arrows found in the hive and in the victim belong to her. The next assumption is that she shot the arrows.”
“And killed Felix Bonaventure,” I finished for him.
“The longer she remains missing, the worse it looks for her.” With a grunt, he stood up.
I got to my feet as well. “I should never have agreed to order the dried mulberries. She has emotional issues. It was wrong to humor her.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself, Marlee. She was a customer with an unusual request that involved berries. Who else would she go to in town? And you were able to get what she wanted.”
“It’s not only that. I suspected the woman Felix was looking for could be Leticia. That’s why I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“When I delivered the berries yesterday and saw Leticia was gone, I got worried. I wanted to warn her so I left a voicemail telling her a man called Felix Bonaventure
was in town looking for Ellen Mulberry. And that the name ‘Mulberry’ made me think of her.”
“I see.” His expression turned grim.
“What if Felix was the man she was so afraid of? What if he somehow found out where she lived? He did know she got her mail in New Bethel. Perhaps he finally found someone at the post office to tell him where she lived. What if he came here and Leticia was waiting for him? With a bow and arrow?” I felt ill. “What if I spooked her so much, she ended up killing a man?”
“Sounds like a lot of ‘what ifs.’ Where’s the proof?”
Kit came out on the porch. “If you two are done, we’d like Marlee to show us exactly where she was in the house yesterday.”
With a heavy heart, I followed Chief Hitchcock onto the porch. Could my voicemail have led to Felix Bonaventure’s death?
Loud yowls erupted from the corner of the porch. As several cats raced past us, one of them leaped onto the boxes of mulberries. When the cat jumped off, I noticed the lid of one of the boxes flapped.
“Someone opened that box.” I went over to inspect it.
The boxes had been taped shut when I left them on the porch yesterday. This one had been slit open. I counted the bags inside.
“Maybe this one wasn’t taped all that well,” Kit said, watching me go through the box.
“No. Someone came here and opened it up. Four bags are missing.”
“Do you think Leticia took them?” Hitchcock asked.
“Who else?” I cast an eye over the log wall of her home. “But I’m not sure why. She didn’t put a single mulberry around her door or windows.”
“Maybe she put them in the house.” Hitchcock gestured at the front door. “After you.”
Once more I stepped into Leticia’s living room. A state trooper stood in the kitchen, his back turned toward me. I spotted another officer in a room down the hallway, while Greg Trejo lifted sofa cushions. The next thing I noticed was the envelope on the coffee table.
I pointed at the envelope. “If Leticia did return, she didn’t bother to open the envelope I left for her. It contains the hundred and sixty dollars she overpaid for the dried mulberries. And I left three cats in here yesterday. Are they still inside?”
Mulberry Mischief Page 6
