Mulberry Mischief

by Sharon Farrow

  I thought they might want to be careful as well. Yesterday she had delivered a note to the front door. Who knew what she intended for today?

  “I need to walk the trail. If that’s how she’s coming and going, I may meet up with her.”

  He gave a great sigh. “Then I’ll have to come with you.”

  “Why? I can easily walk two miles there and back. And I’m dressed for a hike.” I looked down at my jeans, blue pullover, denim jacket, and sneakers. My cross-body bag held my cell phone, small water bottle, and several pieces of dark chocolate. It was also a sunny day in the upper fifties. Even if I weren’t trying to find Leticia, I’d enjoy a morning hike in the woods.

  “The trail branches off along the way. If you take your eyes off the main trail, you could end up hiking for a lot longer than you want. Besides, I’ll be able to point out the poison sumac bushes.” He grimaced. “You don’t want to trip and fall into one of those.”

  “Okay. You convinced me.” I’d twice suffered a bout of poison ivy. I had no wish to repeat the experience with the even more toxic poison sumac.

  I wanted to mention that he wasn’t properly dressed for a hike in the woods, but it would be pointless. Old Man Bowman refused to wear anything but cargo shorts and a baggy shirt. And Birkenstocks on his bare feet. However, he made a concession to winter by adding woolen socks. I had no idea how he hunted while outfitted like that.

  He set off for the opening in the trees. “If we keep up a good pace, we’ll get to the end of the trail in less than thirty minutes. More than enough time to tell you about the UFOs I saw over Grand Traverse Bay last Christmas. The same week there were four Bigfoot sightings in the U.P. One of ’em by me.”

  It promised to be a long two miles.

  * * *

  Old Man Bowman was wrong. Our hike took more than thirty minutes, mainly because he kept stopping to point out suspicious animal tracks he thought might be bipedal. I almost prayed for a sighting of a hairy hominid if only to forestall another hunting tale. The last one involved the time he heard the hoots of a Bigfoot while he was gutting a deer. All of it involved too much descriptive detail, especially the gutting part.

  I kept myself distracted following the tire tracks of Leticia’s scooter. I also hoped to catch the distinctive sound of her scooter coming toward us, but all I heard was my companion’s voice.

  The hike did teach me how to identify poison sumac. Old Man Bowman had twice prevented me from using my hand to bat away a branch from the poisoned shrub. The least I could do was listen to his Bigfoot hunting monologue with good grace.

  “Are we almost there?” I sounded like a cranky child on a road trip.

  “Almost. If you listen, you can hear the waves on the lake.”

  If he ever stopped talking, I was certain I could.

  He crouched down. “These prints are interesting.”

  “Animal or Bigfoot?” I yawned.

  “Human. And they weren’t walking in a straight line.”

  I knelt beside him. There were partial footprints on the dirt, most of them not discernible among the weeds, rocks, and dead leaves gusting in the breeze.

  He stood up and turned in a circle.

  Nervous now, I scanned the area for scooter tire tracks. I’d taken my eyes from the ground a few moments ago. Now I regretted it.

  “Look!” I pointed at the tracks that now swerved back and forth on the trail. “She was trying to avoid something. Or the scooter went out of control.”

  We followed the erratic tracks, with Old Man Bowman pointing at an occasional footprint as well. In the tense silence, I finally heard the surf from the lake. We were almost at the end of the trail.

  He took my arm. “This doesn’t feel right.”

  We hurried up the remainder of the trail. Suddenly the trees ended. So did the tire tracks.

  To our right was Lake Michigan. Up ahead sat the baronial white hotel known as The Beekman. Pines and autumnal flower beds dotted the front lawn. A sweeping driveway led to the wide portico entrance. Behind the hotel were more trees and a parking lot filled with cars.

  A taxi pulled up to the entrance. Two men exited the hotel and got in.

  Not a sign of anyone else. No surprise. It was only a little after 8 A.M.

  “I don’t see her or the scooter,” I said.

  I’d never seen Old Man Bowman so grim. “She never made it to the hotel.”

  Dread washed over me. “The lake?”

  We hurried to the edge of the bluff and looked down. I bit back a scream.

  Forty feet below, a woman lay on the sandy slope of the bluff. From this height, we weren’t able to see her face. But the long orange hair splayed over the sand told us that we had found Leticia the Lake Lady.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Despite his sympathetic manner, the manager of The Beekman looked as if he wished all of us had remained outside with the dead body. Instead, his pristine lobby swarmed with state troopers, local police, and officers from the sheriff’s department. Curious hotel guests made the scene even more confusing.

  I wanted to leave, a sentiment clearly shared by the Sables, who had been summoned down to the lobby and ordered to wait. Old Man Bowman had gotten the attention of a law-enforcement officer and was expounding on his theory that not only was Leticia’s scooter forced off the bluff, there was a likelihood a Bigfoot in the area witnessed it. I hoped this day didn’t end with Wendall Bowman being hauled off to the state mental hospital.

  After spotting Leticia’s body, I called the police on my cell. We couldn’t get to where she lay from our initial vantage point on the bluff. The only access was via the Beekman’s private beach, which Old Man Bowman and I reached from the stairway that led down to the sand.

  Rescue was futile. Leticia had been thrown from her scooter, her fall broken by a shrub jutting from the sandy bluff. Neither of us could get near her on the steep slope. We did get close enough to see that her eyes were open and her body completely still.

  The impact had killed her. All we could do was sit and wait for the police. Pieces of her scooter littered the slope and beach. What was left of the machine lay on the wet sand, the front tire gone. I told Old Man Bowman to stay away from the damaged scooter. Let the police ascertain what happened without us compromising the scene.

  Until their arrival, I spent most of the time crying. Not because I had been close to her. I’d met her only twice. I mourned not her premature death, but her troubled life.

  Fifteen years spent in prison for a crime she likely didn’t commit. Although she was only thirty-three when she walked free, the experience had unsettled her mind. I wish I had known the prison counselor she married. I hoped the older man was kind. I told myself he must have been if Leticia not only agreed to marry him, but lived with him until his death. After he was gone, she led a solitary life, disowned by most of her family, seeking companionship with feral cats, watching the lake as if it held answers—or salvation.

  I also found myself watching the lake while we waited. The blue expanse of water was the last thing she saw before falling to her death. Had she been suddenly distracted, causing her own death? I doubted it. Some people might surmise that her plunge off the bluff was deliberate. But she didn’t seem suicidal. And there was a gang of Sables who wanted her out of the picture, all of them conveniently nearby when she died.

  Although Old Man Bowman shed no tears, I knew he was upset, too. We hadn’t been able to protect her.

  Kit and a fellow deputy from the sheriff’s department were the first to arrive on the scene. I fell into Kit’s arms for another quick bout of crying. Behind me, I heard Old Man Bowman declare that someone had forced the scooter off the bluff. I stopped crying long enough to chime in, “He’s right. It had to be one of the Sables.”

  More police appeared, including Detective Greg Trejo. Four of the men made their way up the bluff to the body. It took a lot of effort. With each step, they sank up to their ankles in the sand. Walking through deep sand feels
like plowing through a snowdrift. I breathed a sigh of relief when they reached her, but I couldn’t bear to watch them bring the body down. It was too upsetting. Even Old Man Bowman looked away. We eagerly accepted a state trooper’s offer to escort us to the hotel, where we would be expected to give a statement.

  Two hours later, we were still in the lobby, along with the Sables. They refused to come near me, even though I sat on a sectional sofa a few yards away. Scarlett Beckford texted nonstop on her phone. Beside her, Keith and Patrick Sable took calls while Ainsley sat on the adjacent sofa, swinging her foot nervously.

  Every ten minutes, she asked, “How much longer is this going to take?”

  Her son Joshua kept dozing off, making him the most relaxed person in the room.

  The Sables remained partially hidden from view by their team of personal assistants, who provided endless cups of coffee, water bottles, and the occasional serving of continental breakfast. When the crowd around them parted, I caught Ingrid Sable observing me like a raptor. The rest of the family kept deferring to her, except for Cameron Sable.

  Oblivious to the hubbub in the lobby, Cameron sat absorbed in a book whose title read A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. He did look up once to give me a gracious smile, as if he knew I had been surreptitiously watching him.

  If they were afraid of being accused of murder, I didn’t discern it. Instead, they appeared irritated, bored, impatient. Everything you would expect of people who didn’t give a damn about the woman who had just been found dead. The real hostility from the Sables was directed toward me. When I first walked into the lobby and saw the Sables gathered there, Keith asked, “What in the hell is she doing here?”

  “Will we never be free of unstable women while we are in Oriole Point?” Ingrid demanded. Dressed in a long-sleeved black dress, her white hair towering above her, she reminded me of the evil fairy Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty.

  None of them looked pleased after learning Old Man Bowman and I found Leticia’s body. The family began talking at once, the general consensus being that my presence was suspicious and probably criminal.

  Weary of the Sables and upset by Leticia’s death, I ignored them. I had been questioned by the police and knew it wouldn’t be the last time. I also knew each Sable would be taken in turn by Kit and Detective Greg Trejo and interrogated in the hotel manager’s office.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Kit enter the hotel. After speaking with his fellow deputies, he walked over to where I sat. “Come with me,” he murmured.

  He led me to the lobby bar. At this hour of the morning the bar was deserted. We were the only ones sitting at any of the high top tables.

  “Have you learned anything helpful?” I asked.

  “Yes. We checked out the trail. As you said, her tire tracks show she swerved and went over the edge. No evidence of anything on the ground that would have caused a problem. We’ll check out the scooter for mechanical failure. We found footprints near the place she went over. Yours and Wendall Bowman’s, of course. But there are others.”

  “Can you identify them? Get a shoe size. A marking from the sole of the shoe.”

  “The prints are indistinct. But someone was lying in wait for her there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because of the evidence on the body.”

  “Didn’t she die from the fall?” I nervously drummed my fingers on the table.

  “She might have, depending on the impact. But I think she was dead before she ever landed on the ground.”

  “From what?”

  “A blow to the back of her head. Our initial guess was a blunt object of some kind. A rock perhaps. Then we found a two-foot-long tree branch that had been tossed into the woods about fifty yards away. We think someone struck her as she drove past.”

  I felt dizzy from the horror of it. “Why do you think the branch was used to kill her?”

  “The fresh blood on it. If it matches the blood of Ellen Nagy, we have the murder weapon.” He grabbed my hand on the table. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted to help her.”

  I looked over at the Sables, surrounded by lackeys. “Old Man Bowman told me she’d used that trail every day since moving into his treehouse. And the trail ends in clear view of The Beekman, where the Sables are staying. One of them could have caught a glimpse of her and figured out that was how she got in and out of Oriole Point. If murder was their intention, all they had to do was wait for her to drive by again.”

  “They’ll be questioned today. In fact, we need a statement from everyone in the hotel, guests and employees. Someone might have seen something suspicious early this morning.”

  I went back over the day’s timeline. “I got to Old Man Bowman’s house right before seven o’clock. And he said Leticia left about thirty minutes earlier.”

  “Driving that scooter, she would have quickly reached the end of the trail,” Kit said. “Not many guests are likely to be outside that early. I’m not confident we’ll turn up witnesses. And they wouldn’t have been able to see her scooter go over the bluff from the hotel itself. I checked. An eyewitness would need to be by the firepit on the front lawn in order to have seen it.”

  The Sables had been at The Beekman since last Saturday, time enough for all of them to have a good idea of the early-morning activity on the grounds. “Unless you can get one of them to confess today, I doubt you’ll be able to do more than scare them.”

  “I don’t think they scare easy.” He looked frustrated. “According to my deputies, the Sables have called their attorneys. Two of them are flying in today. We haven’t even gotten their statement yet, and they’re lawyering up. Which is a smart thing to do.”

  I leaned over the table and said in a low voice, “Did you find the manuscript or laptop in the scooter? It had a storage box.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing in the scooter’s storage box but apples and six identical photos of the dead nanny, Laeticia Murier.”

  “Photos?”

  “Poster size, all folded up. Probably taken from a photo used during the trial. I suspect she meant to post them in town, or at the hotel and conference center.”

  “Today’s prank.” It saddened me that a grown woman thought such measures had any weight or power. Then again, it had resulted in serious consequences for her. Deadly ones.

  “You’ve given your official statement, Marlee, so you can go.” He squeezed my hand. “And please take Mr. Bowman with you. We’ve heard enough about Bigfoot for one day.”

  “Then you didn’t find the book she and Bonaventure had been working on?”

  His brown eyes regarded me with affection and regret. “I suspect the murderer already has them. Like you said, she probably hid the laptop and manuscript in those boxes of mulberries, which we found pillaged on her porch. If so, her version of the story died with her.”

  “Any luck tracking down that crew member who testified against Ellen?”

  “We traced James Smith’s whereabouts during the time he worked for the Sables. He captained a number of their super yachts in the Mediterranean and the South Seas. The year of Ellen’s release from prison, he left their employ to run charter fishing boats in New Zealand. After that, he falls off the map. Don’t know where he went next, although a fellow yachtie says he got married to a woman called Shelly Zahradnik. That name’s a lot less common than James Smith, so there’s a good chance we’ll be able to track her down. We may have a lead in Hawaii.”

  I took comfort from that. “I also think it’s suspicious he quit working for the Sables at the same time Ellen got out of prison.”

  “Agreed. It’s too coincidental. For his testimony, Smith might have been rewarded with years of sailing around the world on super yachts. He seems to have had quite a bit of money when he did quit. The charter fishing boat companies were run more as a hobby than a business.”

  “According to Ellen, he contacted her after he became terminally ill. That means he wanted to set things right with
her before he died. You need to find him before it’s too late, Kit.”

  “We’re doing our best. But if he’s dying of cancer, who knows how long he has?”

  “It’s not just his illness I’m worried about. If the Sables get to him first, you and I both know his death will not be a natural one.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Tie me kangaroo down!”

  I opened one eye. Minnie sat on the back of the couch, singing her favorite Australian ditty. Actually it was the only Aussie song she knew, taught to her by former owners. Due to a problem with taking a parrot out of the country, the Australian family gave up their African grey before they returned to Brisbane. Their loss was my gain. But Minnie still remembered her vocabulary of Australian terms. My favorite was “G’day, cobber.”

  She whistled, then gave a perfect imitation of Panther’s meow. This prompted the kitten to respond with the real thing. Panther and I had been napping on the couch. Since Minnie hadn’t woken us up until now, I suspected my parrot also took the time for a little shut-eye.

  After leaving The Beekman, I went straight home. I’d scheduled Dean to work at the shop. There was no need for me to join him. If I did, I’d have to tell him about our Lake Lady’s death. I didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet. Soon enough it would be public knowledge and I would be inundated with questions. For now, I chose to hide away at home with a talkative parrot and an affectionate kitten. When the world turned harsh, I could think of no better retreat. I always had an affinity for Dorothy and her wish to return to Kansas and Auntie Em.

  The fireplace mantel clock chimed three times. I’d slept for an hour. Despite the nuclear-strength coffee I’d consumed at Old Man Bowman’s, the stress of the day overrode the caffeine and I did something I only resort to when sick: take a nap. I felt much better. Burrowing into my sofa cushions, I resumed cuddling with Panther, who stretched his tiny body beside me.

  My cell phone buzzed from where I’d dropped it next to the sofa. It was a text from Aunt Vicki. She and several shelter volunteers were about to leave for Leticia’s cottage. Yesterday the sheriff’s department gave permission for Humane Hearts to set traps on the property in order to collect the feral cats. She asked if I wanted to meet them there and lend a hand.