Past Due for Murder

by Victoria Gilbert

  “Charles freaking Bartos? Are you out of your mind?” Sunny raked her hands through her hair, destroying the elegant upswept twist she’d obviously spent time creating that morning. “I seem to remember weeks of frantic texts and phone calls, not to mention all-night therapy sessions, to get you through that breakup.”

  “I know, and trust me—I have no romantic interest in the guy. It’s just that I feel a little sorry for him right now. A brief conversation seemed like the acceptable thing to do. I mean, what’s the harm?”

  Sunny’s blue eyes blazed as she yanked at her hair and allowed it to tumble free of its pins. “Yeah, because there’s no possibility that he might make a move on you again. Now that he’s lost his main squeeze …”

  “Really, Sunny, the woman just died a few months ago. I doubt Charles is on the prowl already.”

  “I don’t,” Sunny muttered. She tossed her hair behind her shoulders. “But go on—talk to the jerk. Just don’t come crying to me if he mistreats you again.”

  “Be fair. He’s a bit selfish, but he’s not a monster.” I tugged down the sleeves of the copper-colored silk blouse I’d worn that day. Not to impress Charles, of course, even if the color and cut did flatter me.

  “If you say so.” Sunny sniffed and turned away. “Anyway, I have things covered here, and we have extra volunteers today, so you don’t have to worry about the time.”

  “Thanks,” I said, patting her arm. “You’re a peach.”

  “I’m an idiot is what I am. I should tie you up and stash you in the workroom before I allow you to see that man again. But”—Sunny pulled her arm away—“Go ahead. Listen to his nonsense. See if I care.”

  Of course she cared. I could tell that by the concern wrinkling her brow. “Don’t worry. I won’t be fooled again. I plan to see what he wants and provide a little help if it’s something I think is reasonable. Only then,” I added, offering my friend a reassuring smile.

  “Are you going to tell Richard about this little expedition?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.” I plucked a tiny speck of lint from my blouse. “Eventually.”

  Sunny made a face and turned away. “I’m going to shelf-read now. The Nightingale was here earlier, so I’d better check for misshelved books.”

  I let her go without replying. I knew that she was only concerned because she’d experienced all the painful aftereffects of my breakup with Charles.

  Later that morning, when Sunny had returned to the desk, I slipped away to work in the archives.

  “We never refiled some of those folders we pulled for Mona,” I told her before I headed out. “I thought maybe I’d better get on that.” What I didn’t say was that I was also seeking a task that could take my mind off my upcoming meeting with Charles.

  The pile of acid-free folders on one of the archive’s shelves did need to be placed back into their appropriate boxes. I carried the folders over to the worktable and sorted through them, arranging them in archival number order. Unlike books, archival materials were not cataloged by Dewey decimal numbers. Instead, they were assigned to subject and date groupings, creating specific collections. Most of these folders referenced town folklore, so there were only two boxes that I had to pull in order to refile them.

  Flipping through one of the folders, I noticed that the contents were dated much later than 1879. The disappearance of the two young women had been used by folklorists to add an air of truth to the “mountain lights” story, although such information obviously couldn’t validate the legend.

  But Ada Frye and Violet Greyson had been real women, even if their part in the mountain lights story had been fabricated. I shuffled the folders. Finding none that dealt with town history from the proper time period, I stepped away from the table and scanned the metal shelves that held the rest of our archival collections.

  Mentally kicking myself, I realized that when I’d assisted Mona with her research, I’d pulled items that she’d specifically requested without ever suggesting a deeper dive into the actual historical record. Mona might have rejected my suggestion, but I still should’ve considered that angle.

  Bad researcher, I told myself as I pulled a slender gray box from one of the shelves. At Mona’s request, I had scoured any digitized newspaper archives covering the time period, but had only turned up a two-sentence mention of the missing girls. Faced with this lack of coverage, Mona had surmised that the families had hushed up the story, only allowing the bare bones of it to live on in folklore. The newspapers had proved a legitimate dead end, but not checking other sources at that point had been a failure on my part. As a professional researcher, I should have been more diligent.

  Since it was a repository of information for a town founded before the Revolutionary War, the Taylorsford library stored an abundance of material from the nineteenth century. Fortunately, one of my predecessors had carefully cataloged most of it, at least by year. I fiddled with the elastic tie that closed the acid-free box holding materials from 1879. Maybe I’d find something that would add the final flourish to Mona’s project. Sliding the elastic loop off the button closure on the front of the box, I popped open the lid.

  I slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves before removing any papers from the stack of acid-free plastic sleeves that filled the box. Most of the materials were legal documents, such as wills or deeds, but there were also one or two letters, a few postcards, and an assortment of notes.

  Holding up the fragile paper so that I could decipher the elegant cursive script, I realized that the majority of the correspondence also touched on legal matters—requests for assistance from the town in land disputes and similar things. But then I noticed that one of the letters had been clumsily stuffed into its clear envelope. No archivist or librarian would’ve filed an old document in such a manner.

  That meant that someone else had hastily returned this item—someone who’d apparently looked at the letter in secret, as I hadn’t pulled these folders for anyone recently.

  I removed the letter from its sleeve and gently unfolded it. The first thing I noticed was the date—May 1879. The salutation was to a “Cousin Maud.” Intrigued, I flipped the paper over to read the signature and immediately sank down onto the wooden chair behind the table.

  The letter was signed by a Delbert Frye. I whistled. The writer had to have been the current Delbert’s ancestor.

  If there was any factual basis to the Frye girl’s connection to the mountain lights legend, I was certain I’d find it in this document. Surely the nineteenth-century Delbert Frye wouldn’t have omitted a mention of such a traumatic event from a personal letter to another family member.

  It took some effort to decipher old Delbert Frye’s scrawl, and I glanced at only the first paragraph or two, but it was clear that I’d hit the research jackpot. Frye wrote of the family’s “great loss,” as well as the need to keep the details of Ada’s disappearance a secret, since “it could bring shame upon us all, but Ada most of all, if she ever returns.”

  Glancing at my watch, I realized that it was almost time to leave for my visit with Charles. I hurriedly filed the other folders in their respective boxes but set the letter aside, planning to carry it into the library with me and share it with Mona at the earliest opportunity. After shelving the boxes, I returned to the table and picked up the letter. Preparing to fold it properly and insert it back into its sleeve, I stopped and stared at a word scrawled on the bottom of the first page—“gold.”

  I peered at the surrounding text, finally making out: “She took all the gold coins Father had so judiciously hidden as well. Our family’s secret fortune and our protection against the vagaries of life, now lost, unless Ada can be found.”

  Gold coins. I laid the letter back on the table. So there is a kernel of truth to the rumors about a treasure lost in the nearby mountains.

  Of course, the obvious conclusion was that Ada had used the coins to finance her new life in another town, far from Taylorsford. In that case, no tra
ce of the gold would ever be found. But if the other account I’d read was true—if she and Violet had died in the mountains—had that fortune been buried with their unrecovered bodies? Or had they hidden it somewhere before their untimely deaths?

  I took a deep breath and picked up the letter again, folded it along its set-in creases, and slid it back into the thin plastic sleeve. Slipping it into an empty acid-free folder that I tucked under one arm, I left the archives.

  As I crossed the parking lot, another thought surfaced—a theory I might need to share with Brad Tucker rather than Mona.

  The archives were not heavily used, except by Sunny and me, and had been thoroughly inventoried following the events of the past summer. By process of elimination, that meant that the person most likely to have discovered the 1879 Delbert Frye letter, and to have shoved it back into its envelope inappropriately, was Mona or one of her students.

  Which might put an entirely new spin on why Lacey Jacobs had decided to hike the Twin Falls trail on her own.

  Chapter Ten

  I shared my discovery of the letter with Sunny, who swore to keep it safely stashed in the workroom until we could show it to Mona. Before, of course, she once again warned me to watch myself around Charles.

  The letter had effectively pushed thoughts of my upcoming meeting out of my head. It’s possible, I thought as I drove along, that Lacey saw the information about lost gold coins and was determined to find them for herself. Or maybe Hope was the one to discover the secret, along with Lacey, and that’s why she was so upset over the dancer’s disappearance. Maybe she was concerned that Lacey had found the treasure and decided to run off with it.

  I gnawed on my lower lip. Of course, if Chris made the discovery, he could’ve confessed his find to his boyfriend. Perhaps that was why Ethan was out tromping through the woods on the evening we took Loie to the vet.

  Preoccupied with analyzing these theories, I made several wrong turns despite Charles’s clear directions. I finally found his property by spotting the distinctive Swiss chalet–style house, which was located close to the road. Pulling up in front of the house, I sat in my parked car for a few minutes, working up the courage to approach the crimson front door.

  Our conversation at the bonfire had felt even more odd after I’d replayed it in my mind several times. Unsure of what Charles wanted from me, I couldn’t help but feel nervous about this meeting. Would he truly apologize, or even bring up the past?

  Swallowing my anxiety, I crawled out of the car and crossed the neatly trimmed front yard. Looking out over the property, I noticed a weathered shed that seemed at odds with the pristine appearance of the rest of the property, then realized that the shed actually sat behind a wire fence that separated the neatly trimmed yard from a field of orchard grass.

  That building probably belongs to Delbert Frye, I thought as I climbed the stairs to the rough-timbered front porch. Brad did say Delbert’s land was adjacent to Charles’s property. I narrowed my eyes and studied the contrast between Charles’s perfectly maintained property and the derelict condition of the shed. I bet that drives Charles mad. He never did like a mess.

  I turned my attention back to the brightly painted door. As my fingers hovered over the brass acorn knocker, the door opened.

  “Hello, Amy. I heard your car. Please come in.” Charles motioned for me to slide past him before he closed the door behind us.

  My gaze swept over the interior of the chalet. It was a large, open space, with a cathedral ceiling supported by exposed timbers. The opposite end of the room was comprised of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over a large deck and the pine woods beyond. The flanking tall walls, painted a soft beige, were bare except for two framed posters and a large photograph. I recognized the posters—they advertised some of Charles’s older solo concerts—but the photograph was new.

  It was a blowup of the cover of the Alma Viva Trio’s first album. A grand piano floated on a raft adrift on an obviously CGI-enhanced pond. Water lilies filled the pond, their platelike green pads reminiscent of the raft. Seated at the piano was a barefoot Charles, wearing worn jeans and a blue T-shirt that highlighted the color of his eyes. Behind him the cellist, also wearing casual clothes, leaned on his instrument. And perched on top of the piano, cradling a violin …

  Marlis Dupre.

  I sucked in a deep breath as my gaze swept over the flowing mane of blonde hair that appeared to have been swept away from her gorgeous face by a breeze.

  Probably a wind machine, I thought, before I composed myself and turned to face Charles.

  “I do want to express my condolences again,” I said, examining him. Although I still thought he was far too thin, today his slender frame matched the Romantic poet theme of his loose white shirt and tight black trousers.

  But he’s no Byron, I thought, contemplating his pale skin and light hair. More of a Shelley.

  He had followed my earlier gaze and stared at the photo of Marlis for a moment before dropping his head. “Thank you. It’s getting a little easier, but still …” When he looked up at me, his eyes glistened with tears. “It’s the little things that are the hardest. Marlis used to go out jogging so early. She said she liked to get an active start on her day. Half the time she’d dress in the dark and just grab a hat or gloves or whatever out of a basket in the hall closet. So when she came home I’d catch her wearing one blue mitten and one brown one, or my knit cap, or a scarf that clashed with her jacket. We’d often get a good laugh out of that.” He wiped his eyes with his index finger.

  My chest tightened. I hadn’t expected him to display such obvious emotion. “I really am sorry,” I said, with more sincerity than I’d mustered on my first attempt.

  “It’s all right. I know I didn’t treat you well, Amy. You had no reason to agree to meet with me, much less sympathize with me.”

  I shrugged. “But I do. You two were together for a couple of years. I know it has to be difficult to deal with such a loss.”

  Charles looked me over. “There you go, being nice again. Anyway, please have a seat.” He motioned toward a white leather sofa anchored to a central seating area by a brightly patterned wool rug.

  I sank down into the buttery soft cushions, mentally calculating the cost of the sofa, as well as the coffee table created from a single slice of a tree trunk. “You know, if you ever need any other handcrafted pieces, I have a friend who builds furniture.”

  “You mean Walter Adams?” Charles paused beside the marble-topped wooden island that separated the seating area from an extravagantly appointed kitchen. “I’ve heard he does good work.”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “I’ll have to check out his pieces sometime. Now—what would you like to drink?” Charles headed for his stainless-steel refrigerator, which looked like it could store enough food to feed a household for an entire winter. “I’m having a glass of wine. Would you like one?”

  “No thanks.” I did want some wine. It might take the edge off this visit. But … “I have to drive back and work this afternoon. I don’t think drinking alcohol is my best option. Just some water will be fine.”

  Charles returned with a glass of water for me as well as his goblet of white wine. Settling into a rocker that looked like it had been constructed from carefully bent and polished tree branches, he took a long swallow from his glass before staring at me. “You look good, Amy.”

  “Do I? Nice of you to say so, but I think I look just the same as I did when you unceremoniously dumped me. Now—tell me why you wanted to talk with me so urgently.”

  Charles laughed. “Same old Amy. Straight to the point. Very well—I would like your help in tamping down some ridiculous rumors.”

  I circled the rim of my glass with one finger. “About Moon and Thistle?”

  “So you’ve already heard that gossip? Yes, that.”

  “Mona Raymond claims that you plagiarized her research.” As I swiped the rim again, a delicate ringing sound rose from the glass.

/>   “That bi …” Charles swallowed the end of the epithet along with a gulp of his wine. “She was always looking for a cut of my profits off that composition. As if I would entertain such a notion. I stole nothing from her, as you very well know.”

  “Actually, I don’t,” I said, meeting Charles’s intense blue gaze with a lift of my chin. “You’d already composed that piece before we started dating, if you recall.”

  Charles set his empty wine glass on a matching end table next to the rocker. “I didn’t steal anyone’s research.” He widened his eyes and fixed me with a gaze that would’ve melted me in the past. “You must know I would never do such a thing.”

  I leaned forward to set my glass on the coffee table. “To be honest, Charles, there were a lot of things I didn’t believe you would ever do—until you did them.”

  He threw up his hands. “Are we going to delve into the whole breakup thing now? I really thought we could move past that, especially after our conversation the other night.”

  “Why? Just because you want to? And because you need my help?” I tilted my head and examined him with a critical eye. “You aren’t that charming, I’m afraid.”

  “So why did you come, if you dislike me so much?”

  “I didn’t say that I disliked you. I simply no longer trust you. As for Mona’s claims—I can’t prove or disprove them. Sadly, I suppose I’m of no use to you. Once again.” I stood, tugging the hem of my blouse down over my hips.

  Charles leapt to his feet. “Wait. If what you want is an apology …”

  “That would make a good start. But honestly, Charles, I still couldn’t help you, apology or no apology. Because I don’t know if you stole Mona’s research or not. I wasn’t there when that piece was composed, and as for whether I believe you’re capable of using someone else’s work without acknowledgment or compensation”—I lifted and dropped my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug—“the jury is still out.”