Seaside Secrets

by Glen Ebisch

  “I’d appreciate knowing sooner rather than later,” Llewellyn said. “This room does tend to get booked in advance.”

  “Don’t worry,” Clarissa said. “We’ll get right on it. By the way, I came into contact through the church with a couple of people in town who have the same last name as you: Doris and Elise Llewellyn. Are they related?”

  The man’s lips thinned into a straight line. “Distant relatives. My grandfather’s older brother lived here years ago. Doris and Elise are his wife and daughter.” He nodded abruptly and motioned with his hand, directing them to the front door.

  “A recent police matter has come up with regard to the murder of your great-uncle Royce,” Clarissa said slowly.

  “I know nothing about him,” Llewellyn replied. “He was dead long before I was born.”

  “Of course he was,” Clarissa said soothingly. “But the police are wondering how many family members are still in the area. I can understand why you might not want to talk to me, but I can easily have Detective Baker come here and make it official.”

  Llewellyn nodded nervously. He directed them to a table in a corner away from everyone else, and they sat.

  He began rubbing his forehead. “My father warned me not to set a business up here. He said that small towns have long memories, and there would still be people around who recognized the name and connected it with a famous murder. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.”

  “Don’t panic yet. You may not have to get involved at all,” Clarissa assured him. “Where does your father live?”

  “My father, mother, and two sisters live in the Philadelphia area.”

  “Do you have any contact with Doris and Elise?”

  “When Uncle Royce was killed, my grandfather broke off all contact with them and pretty much forbade my father from ever reaching out to them,” Llewellyn said. “Doris tried to get in touch with my grandfather during the first few years, but she finally gave up. I’ve never met them, and as far as I know, none of my family has either.”

  “What do you know about the murder?” Clarissa asked.

  “Not much. My father will hardly talk about it. He considers it a family embarrassment. All I’ve been told is that Uncle Royce was a tough businessman and had an eye for the ladies. Somehow he rubbed the wrong person the wrong way and was shot.”

  “Do you know anything about Elise?” Ashley asked.

  Llewellyn stared across the restaurant. “My father learned from my grandfather that she went sort of crazy after her father was killed. Her mother sent her away to school, but she went off the rails and ended up in some kind of psychiatric institution. I guess later on, she came back to Shore Side.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” Clarissa asked.

  He paused for a minute, obviously unsure whether to speak. “Look, I don’t even know whether this is true or not, but my father let slip once that his dad had told him that Elise had a baby,” he said.

  “While she was in the psychiatric institution?” asked Clarissa, leaning forward in her chair.

  “I don’t know exactly when. My father thought that her mother made her give it up for adoption. I guess having a child without being married was a big deal in those days, and it would have been embarrassing.”

  “Was it a boy or girl?” Ashley asked.

  “No idea. I don’t think anyone in the family knows what happened to it.” He stood up. “I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”

  Llewellyn turned and headed for the door, the women following.

  He smiled tightly as he held the door for them. “I hope to hear from you again . . . about the luncheon.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Clarissa promised.

  ***

  “So, what do you think?” Ashley asked as they drove back to the parsonage. “Did he tell us anything useful?”

  “Hard to know,” Clarissa replied. “That adopted child could be anywhere. It’s a bit unlikely he or she would be here in Shore Side.”

  “But what if the child did reconnect with his or her family and lives in town? That would give us another suspect,” Ashley pointed out.

  “I suppose. I wonder how hard it is to get access to adoption records these days,” Clarissa said. “If we could find the adoptive parents, maybe we could discover where the child is living.”

  “Detective Baker could probably tell us. I bet the police have all sorts of ways of finding these things out.”

  “I’ll check. And we have to remember that this child was born over forty years ago, so he or she would be well into middle age by now.”

  When Clarissa pulled into the lot behind the church offices, she turned to Ashley. “You’re done for the day,” she told her assistant. “Why don’t you head home?”

  “I have my lunch in the office refrigerator. I think I’ll eat here. Then I can avoid having to explain to my aunt why I don’t want a ham sandwich.”

  Clarissa nodded. “I’ll go over to the parsonage and eat a little bit of the huge lunch Mrs. Gunn has undoubtedly left for me,” she said with a grin. “Then let’s see if we can come up with any new ideas overnight, and we’ll talk this all over again in the morning.”

  Clarissa walked across to the parsonage. On the kitchen table was a note that her lunch, a salad, was on the third shelf in the fridge. She took a portion of the large salad and sat down at the table.

  She spent a few moments reviewing the questions she was going to ask during her visitations, and then decided to call Detective Baker about what she’d learned at the Florentina. After all, she’d promised to keep him more in the loop.

  When he answered, she explained to him that Elise had given a baby up for adoption and that she wanted to know if he could discover the name and location of the child.

  “I’ll have to talk to the district attorney on this,” Baker said. “I have a feeling that it would require a court order. The easiest thing might be to go have a chat with Doris and Elise. Maybe they would volunteer the information.”

  “Okay. It would be really helpful to know where the child is now.”

  “You think they might be the killer?”

  “If the child has found and made up with the Llewellyns and feels like part of the family, he or she might be motivated to protect whichever one of them killed Royce,” Clarissa said.

  “I’ll check into it,” Baker promised.

  The phone rang as soon as Clarissa set it down.

  “Hi, this is Samantha Jones,” said the voice on the other end. “Sorry I haven’t been around to do my survey of the church, but the last few days have been awfully busy. I promise I’ll get to it by the end of the week.”

  “No problem,” Clarissa said.

  “I do have that length of pipe I need to fix the sink in the parsonage,” Samantha said. “I have a job in your neighborhood early this evening, and I was wondering if I could come over right after it to work on your sink. I know Mrs. Gunn really wants it fixed.”

  Clarissa went through her mental schedule. “I’ll be here, so that should be fine. I might be working in the office, so if the parsonage is locked up, just come over and get me.”

  “Will do.”

  Clarissa ended the call and saw that she had to leave for her first visit. Taking her list of questions, a couple of pens, and a notepad, she headed out the door to her car.

  ***

  Four hours later, Clarissa returned to the parsonage. Ashley had been correct; there was no way she could have booked more than two visits in an afternoon. Each had taken over an hour and a half, and that was only after excusing herself rather forcefully from both houses when they wanted her to stay longer. She was afloat in tea, and she felt she already had enough notes for a complete church history. She began to seriously wonder exactly what she had gotten herself into. But she had to admit that the people she met seemed delighted to have the minister come into their homes, and they obliquely commented that this was something Reverend Hollingsworth should have done a long time
ago.

  Although Clarissa wasn’t very hungry, she decided that she had better eat after she changed into more comfortable clothes. When she waited until closer to bedtime, she often didn’t sleep very well. So after changing, she heated up a small plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes that she’d separated from the larger plate Mrs. Gunn had left, and ate while she leafed through the mail.

  After eating, she found that she was too restless to relax, and she began pacing up and down the large living room in the parsonage. She had a nagging feeling that there was some connection in the Llewellyn case that was right in front of her eyes, and she was just failing to put it together.

  Tired of pacing, she decided to go over to the office and rest her mind by transcribing her notes from her visits into a computer file. As she left the parsonage, she remembered that Samantha would be coming in later to repair the sink, so she wrote a note and taped it to the door to remind her that she’d be in the office. She walked across, unlocked the office door, and, heeding Detective Baker’s warning, carefully locked it behind her.

  Not bothering to turn on the light in her office, Clarissa began transcribing her notes, pausing along the way to polish them up a bit so they would sound like a historical narrative. She became so engrossed in her work that it was a couple of hours later before she looked up and realized that it had begun to get dark outside.

  She stood up and stretched the kinks out of her back, and that was when she heard the thump of someone knocking on the outside office door.

  She paused; was that Samantha? She listened for the call of the woman’s voice, but the knocking just continued. That struck her as odd, and she felt an uneasy lump form in her stomach.

  Her eye caught on the canister of pepper spray sitting on the corner of her desk, where it had remained ever since Ashley had given it to her. It probably was just Samantha, but she had promised so many people that she would be careful. Better to be safe than sorry, she thought, putting the small canister into her pocket.

  Taking the keys from her desk because the inside lock also required a key, she walked into the outer office. Clarissa slowly unlocked the door, opened it a crack, and peered outside into the rapidly darkening night.

  There she saw Wanda Bascomb standing on the stoop. Clarissa breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the nurse, who waved a white envelope at her.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I found this at work today, and I thought you might like to see it. It might be important in regard to Dave’s murder.”

  Clarissa let her inside and took the envelope. She carefully opened it, wondering if she would get in trouble with Detective Baker for smudging prints. She slowly unfolded the piece of stationary.

  The page was blank. She turned it over. The other side was blank as well.

  “What am I supposed . . .” Clarissa glanced up and saw that Wanda now held a large knife in her right hand. Suddenly things fell into place. “You’re Elise’s daughter,” she realized aloud. “There never was anyone in a hoodie.”

  “I knew you’d figure it out eventually,” Wanda said menacingly. “When I followed you to the Florentina today, I realized that you were getting too close for comfort.”

  “Detective Baker knows everything. Killing me won’t solve your problem,” Clarissa warned her, backing up and grasping her keys tightly.

  Wanda advanced toward her, the knife raised. “He’ll never figure it out the way you did,” she spat. “Anyway, I’ll be long gone by the time they find your body in the morning, and there’ll be no way they can charge my mother or grandmother. They had nothing to do with any of the murders—at least the recent ones.”

  Fumbling desperately with one hand, Clarissa managed to get a grip on the pepper spray in her pocket. Hoping she had the nozzle pointing in the right direction, she pulled it out of her pocket and fired it directly into Wanda’s eyes.

  The woman screamed and began flailing around sightlessly with the knife. Moving toward her unarmed side, Clarissa pushed her out of the way and ran out the door.

  She had only taken a couple of steps when she was confronted by Doris Llewellyn, who was leaning on a cane with one hand, and holding a gun remarkably steady with the other.

  “Don’t make a move, or I will shoot you,” the old woman warned.

  “You’re going to shoot me anyway,” Clarissa gasped, frozen in place.

  “No, I’m going to let Wanda do the job with her knife once she recovers enough to come out here. You didn’t hurt her, did you? She’s precious to me,” Doris growled.

  “She’s fine,” Clarissa said regretfully.

  “You really should have stopped your amateur investigating before I had to go this far,” Doris sighed. “When Wanda saw you talking to Noah Llewellyn, I knew eventually you’d put two and two together.”

  “If I can, the police will.”

  “I plan to send Wanda far, far away, and the police have nothing on Elise or myself.”

  “Poor Elise,” Clarissa said, stalling for time.

  “Yes, I’ve been protecting her for years. When that David Ames told her about Royce’s relationship with Maggie Preston, Elise was devastated.” Doris’ lip trembled. “She stole her father’s gun from his office desk and waited for him to come home. I was upstairs and never knew. As soon as he walked in the door, she shot him. By the time I got downstairs, she had collapsed on the floor beside her father with the gun still in her hand.”

  “And David Ames saw her do it.”

  Doris nodded. “The demands for money started a few days later. They weren’t unreasonable, and so I paid them. When David went into the hospital, we couldn’t believe our good luck that Wanda was working on his floor. We decided that he would never leave the hospital alive. Once Wanda overheard his conversation with you, she suspected that he was going to pass on his secret to Jack Spurlock. So we simply decided to speed up David’s timetable.”

  “But why kill Jack?” Clarissa asked. “He knew nothing about the murder.”

  “When he came to the hospital with you to see Ames, he said that he already knew everything that had happened in the past. We couldn’t risk that he might figure out who had killed Royce.”

  “So you killed him for insurance.”

  Doris sighed. “Can you imagine how tired we were of paying blackmail after fifty years?” she demanded.

  There was a coughing and sputtering behind her, and Clarissa turned to see Wanda staggering out of the office. Unfortunately, she still held the knife firmly in her hand.

  “Don’t try to run, my dear,” said Doris. “I was a very good shot in my youth—Royce taught me—and I believe I still am.”

  Clarissa knew she was between two people determined to kill her. She thought her best chance was to try to overcome Wanda and get the knife away from her. In the confusion she might be able to escape without being shot.

  She was about to turn and charge toward the nurse when Samantha Jones stepped out of the surrounding darkness behind Doris and quickly twisted the gun from the old woman’s hand.

  “Drop the knife,” Samantha said to Wanda, aiming the gun at her. “I’m a pretty good shot as well.” There was no hint of compromise in the veteran's voice.

  Reluctantly, Wanda let the knife fall from her hand.

  Keeping a close eye on both Doris and Wanda, Samantha passed her cell phone to Clarissa. “I think it’s high time we called the police, don’t you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “So Wanda Bascomb was the granddaughter, and she killed both Ames and Spurlock to end the blackmail of her mother?”

  Clarissa nodded in response to Ashley’s question. They were sitting in her office, discussing the previous night’s events. Doris and Wanda were in police custody, and Elise was probably being transferred to a mental institution as they spoke.

  Clarissa was indebted to Samantha for saving her life. No matter what the rest of the church board said after her probationary period, Clarissa was all for her being the church sacr
istan. She’d feel a lot safer with Samantha around, that was for sure. Who would have thought Shore Side could be so dangerous?

  “Something snapped in Elise when she found out her father was cheating on her mother,” Clarissa explained to Ashley. “He went from being someone she idolized to someone she hated. So she stole the gun from his office, and shot him when he came home the next night.”

  “And Ames was up to his neck in this,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “He told Elise about her father and brought the whole thing about. And then he happened to be at the house when she shot him.”

  “As far as I can reconstruct it, he had a few drinks and went there to confront Royce for firing him,” Clarissa said. “He happened to get there just in time to see Elise shoot her father, and he’d been blackmailing the family ever since.”

  “It’s hard to feel sorry for him,” said Ashley.

  “True. But murder is always wrong.”

  “I suppose. What did Detective Baker say when he showed up? Was he angry at you?”

  Clarissa looked somber. “He was pretty upset that I had almost been killed. But he came close to congratulating me for solving the crime. A reporter and photographer from the county newspaper showed up, as well. It was quite a scene.”

  “I bet you’ll be famous,” Ashley said.

  “I hope not. I’d rather have it all disappear.”

  “Well, it sounds like things worked out pretty well for you this last week. You solved a major crime, and you have two hunky guys interested in going out with you. What are you going to do to celebrate?”

  Clarissa smiled. “I’m just going to try to relax.”

  The door to the office flew open then, and Andrew Corrigan stepped inside. He had a newspaper held up in front of him like a banner.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked accusingly, waving the paper at the two women.

  Ashley took it and read the headline out loud: “‘Private Eye Pastor Solves Murder.’ Hey, this is pretty good press. It should pack them into the pews on Sunday.”

  Clarissa moaned.

  “How could you take chances like that?” Andrew demanded. “You could easily have been killed.”