The Serenity Stone Murder

by Marianne Jones

  “Well, something fishy is going on, agreed? And it may very well have something to do with the murder, right?”

  “Okay,” Margaret said cautiously.

  “And we now know some things about it that aren’t common knowledge, am I right?”

  “Well, we don’t actually know anything for sure.”

  “And we’re here in town without anything special to do . . .”

  “Well, actually, I was hoping to track down Tom Derosier.”

  “So, why don’t we follow up on this situation?”

  “How on earth are we supposed to do that?”

  “Simple.” Louise looked very pleased with herself. “We follow those two.”

  “We wha-a . . . oh no, now you’re losing it.”

  “Come on, it’ll be fun! Admit it, you’re as curious as I am.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not nearly as crazy.”

  “Look, we won’t be breaking any laws. We just follow them and see if we can figure out what they’re up to.”

  “Louise,” Margaret said in what she attempted to make her most reasonable tone, “this has gone far enough. I let you drag me, against my better judgment, to a funeral and reception for a complete stranger, but I draw the line at stalking people.”

  “Who said anything about stalking? We’re just following two people to find out where they go and what they do.”

  “That’s essentially the definition of stalking.”

  Louise waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s really quite simple. We can follow them in my car without being obvious.”

  “What if they split up?”

  “Well, there are two of them and two of us. We just have to decide ahead of time who follows whom.”

  “Are you serious? Or is this some sort of early onset senility?”

  “Come on, Margaret. Where’s your spirit of adventure? Live a little.”

  Before Margaret could respond, Louise grabbed her arm, speaking rapidly in a low voice, “Don’t look now. It’s them, and they look like they’re leaving. Let’s casually follow them out to the parking lot.”

  Margaret reluctantly allowed herself to be towed out to Louise’s car, but once they were safely inside, she turned to her friend and said sternly, “Now look, Louise, I never agreed to any of this.”

  Louise was oblivious, seemingly intent on watching the pair walking toward the Miata. As the couple pulled out of the parking lot, she started up the car and put it in gear.

  “Now, wait a minute!” Margaret yelped. “This has gone far enough! I refuse to chase these people.”

  “Too late now,” Louise responded, signalling and looking both ways before turning onto the street. “You’re in my car, so I guess you’re going wherever I go.”

  “No, I’m not! Let me out. I’ll walk back to the hotel.”

  “Can’t. Sorry. Don’t want to lose them.”

  “Louise Marie Gagnon! Stop this! You’ve lost your mind!”

  Louise ignored her, focusing instead on keeping track of the Miata.

  This was turning out to be just like the fiasco with Vincent all over again. Louise was usually so good-natured, but when she got an idea fixed in her mind, she was immovable.

  They followed the Miata to a white, colonial-style office building downtown that looked somewhat out of place among all the older, grey, stone structures. The couple parked in front, entering the building that had a brass plate on the door that read Bradley and Associates, Attorneys at Law.

  Louise parked across the street from the Miata.

  “Now what?” asked Margaret, still furious with Louise, but also still curious in spite of herself.

  “We wait,” said Louise.

  “For what?”

  “For whatever. We’re keeping an eye on their movements. Haven’t you ever watched any police shows on TV? We’re doing surveillance.”

  They waited. Ten minutes later, the couple re-emerged from the building, but only Mrs. Whalen got into the Miata. Her companion waved to her and began walking down the street, carrying a leather bag that he hadn’t been holding prior to his visit to the law office.

  “Quick!” said Louise. “Get out of the car!”

  “What for?” asked Margaret, confused and suddenly even more worried about being caught.

  “We have to split up. You follow him, I’ll stay with her. We can reconnect later at your hotel.”

  “Louise—”

  “There’s no time to argue about this. I don’t want to lose her. Hop out!”

  Groaning, Margaret reluctantly stepped out onto the sidewalk. She had barely made it out safely before Louise sped away from the curb, pursuing the Miata.

  Margaret stood at the side of the road for a moment, feeling stunned and ridiculous, as the man she was supposed to follow strode further away. “How am I going to do this?” she muttered. “I feel like an idiot. I am an idiot, listening to Louise. How does she always manage to do this to me? First she drags me to that silly retreat. Then she forces me to spend a night at Bubbles. Now this.”

  Alternately berating herself and Louise, she began to walk at what she thought was a discreet distance behind the man. When he crossed the street and climbed the steps into the public library, she waited a few minutes before following.

  Once inside the old building, her nerves calmed at the remembered scent of new and old books, and she looked around for her quarry. She strolled through the stacks as nonchalantly as possible, trying to look as though she were searching for a particular book.

  Mrs. Whalen’s companion was nowhere to be found in the reference section, nor in fiction, or self-help.

  “Can I help you find something?” a young woman wearing a library employee name tag asked.

  “Oh, uh, no thanks, I’m just browsing,” Margaret replied with a nervous laugh.

  “Is there a particular section you’re looking for?” she persisted.

  “No, no, I’m just looking around.”

  As she drifted toward the arts section, aware that people don’t typically browse through every section, she felt the woman’s puzzled eyes on her back. Trying to look convincing in her role as a serious library patron, she took a book of poetry from a shelf and pretended to be engrossed in it.

  Where could he have gone? She had circulated the whole main floor without spotting him. How could she have lost him in such a small building?

  The only place she hadn’t checked yet was the children’s section downstairs. What could he be doing down there? Even if he had children of his own, or nephews or nieces, he looked like someone who would be shopping for them at a bookstore rather than borrowing from the library. His whole appearance seemed very out of place for a public library.

  She waited just a few more minutes upstairs, hoping to see him appear from around a random stack, then finally gave up and decided to head downstairs to check the children’s section.

  There he was, thumbing through a Harry Potter book, his leather satchel on the floor beside him. Margaret quickly turned toward the videos and pretended to be searching for something. Minutes later, he left abruptly through the glass doors, going back upstairs, leaving the book behind.

  Margaret waited for what she hoped was a safe interval before following him up the stairs and out of the library. From the top of the steps outside she could still see the man as he approached a drugstore on the corner. Continuing to follow, but being careful to stay half a block behind, Margaret watched as he entered the drugstore. She hesitated. She didn’t want to lose him, but he was bound to notice if she followed him inside every building he entered. Ducking into the dollar store next door, she pretended to examine the merchandise closest to the door, ensuring that she could keep an eye out for her target. Her furtive manner seemed to draw the attention of the clerk, who seemed to be on the lookout for shoplifters.

  “Are you looking for anything?” the woman asked, her blood-red lipstick turned up at the corners in an unfriendly smile.

  “I’m—I’m
just looking around,” said Margaret, aware of how lame she must sound. Her nervous glances out the window, and her ready position to dart out the door if she saw the man, caused the the other woman’s peacock-shadowed eyes to narrow in suspicion.

  “Are you interested in personalized key chains?” the woman persisted, slipping one off the rack and showing it to her. She clearly had no intention of moving out of Margaret’s range.

  Margaret wasn’t, but decided that it would be hard to explain what she was really doing hovering by the key chain rack.

  “Um, yes. Do you have any for a Hugo?”

  The woman looked at her coldly.

  “You want a key chain for a Hugo?”

  “Yes,” said Margaret brightly, starting to get into the mood. “My nephew just got his driver’s license. I thought it would be a nice little congratulatory gift.”

  The woman looked at her as though she were trying to decide whether Margaret was for real or not.

  “We don’t have any Hugos.”

  “Oh, you never know,” said Margaret, bending to examine them. “They have a lot of names. There just might be one in there somewhere.”

  “There aren’t any,” the woman said flatly. “I unpacked them all myself.”

  “Well,” said Margaret, “maybe one for my niece then.”

  “And her name is?” the woman said, one hand-drawn eyebrow raised.

  “Persephone,” Margaret blurted.

  The woman’s cheeks reddened. “We don’t have any Persephones, either,” she spat in disbelief.

  At that moment, Margaret spotted the man coming out of the corner drugstore.

  “Oh well then. I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, darting for the door and it jingled noisily as she yanked it open.

  The man’s next stop was a menswear store. Margaret hesitated outside the shop. She didn’t want to be obvious about going into every place he went, but how else was she going to keep up with him? She walked over to the lights at the next intersection, and back again. She went into the bank next door to the men’s shop and withdrew twenty dollars from the ATM, trying to kill a few more minutes. That done, she stood by the window, looking out.

  “Now what, genius?” she asked herself. “This guy’s movements aren’t all that interesting. I don’t know what this is supposed to tell me.”

  The only nearby establishments were a greasy-looking café, a call centre, a video arcade, and a hairdresser. There was no real way for her to hover casually in any of those places while waiting for him to emerge.

  After considering and rejecting the idea of another stroll down the block and back, she noticed a woman at the ATM glancing at her curiously. Standing inside the bank with nothing to do was making her look conspicuous, if not suspicious. It seemed like she had no alternative but to enter the menswear store herself. She tried to enter as unobtrusively as possible, but a young salesman, eager for a commission, swooped down, smiling as though he had been waiting for her all his life.

  “Hi there. Can I help you find anything?” he said loudly enough to be heard by anyone who might be in the change room at the back.

  “Just looking, thank you,” she mumbled, ducking her head, pretending to study a sweater on a lower shelf. She could see the man she was following, talking with an older salesman in the suit section. Whether he had noticed her or not, she couldn’t be sure.

  “No problem,” the young salesman said with the hearty charm he probably used on all the girls at school. “Are you shopping for your husband?”

  She had to say something plausible. Saying, “no one in particular,” wouldn’t cut it.

  “Um, no, not my husband. My, uh . . . son-in-law.”

  “Awesome,” he nodded and smiled as though he and her son-in-law were best friends. “And does he usually dress pretty casually?”

  Willing him unsuccessfully to go away, she said, “Yes, he’s fairly casual.” As he moved toward a rack of sweatshirts, she said, “but sometimes he likes to dress up, too.”

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. “And what size does he wear?”

  “Size?”

  “Yes. Is he a big guy, would you say? Or about average, like me?”

  “Oh, average, I guess.”

  “Well, what about one of these sweaters? They’re a nice compromise between casual and dressy.”

  She examined the sweaters, pretending to be interested. Off in the back corner, the older salesman demonstrating the finer points of a pinstripe suit jacket. “You know, I’m really just looking around to get ideas right now,” she said, avoiding eye contact with the young clerk. “Just to see what’s out there. His birthday’s actually months away.”

  “Right on,” he said agreeably and continued, “Did you know we have a ‘buy-one, get-the-second-one-half-price’ sale on right now? You could get him one item for his birthday, and another for Christmas for half-price.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, that way you could get some of your Christmas shopping out of the way early.”

  “Mm-hmm.” How to lose this pest? He continued to follow her, pointing out new arrivals and making gift suggestions. Apparently she wasn’t going to be able to shake him. To her relief, her quarry finished what he was doing and finally left the store without purchasing anything. She tried to wait a discreet amount of time, pretending to listen to the young man’s sales pitch before finally cutting him off and making a dash for the door. It took a few moments before she spotted her prey, two blocks down, turning down a side street. The sky was beginning to cloud over, and a wind was starting up. Wrapping her sweater more tightly around her shoulders, she briskly headed off in pursuit.

  As she turned the corner she saw the man moving quickly into the distance. He was certainly wasting no time. Maybe Louise was right, and something was up. Maybe this would all pay off after all. Intrigued, and a little excited, she walked at a fast clip, still unable to close the gap between them. A few raindrops began to spatter the sidewalk, but she wasn’t concerned about them, feeling that now that she might finally be closing in on some answers. The man was obviously in good shape. After three or four blocks at this pace, Margaret was starting to feel out of breath.

  As he rounded a corner, she sped up, fearful of losing him. As the rain picked up, she broke into a full run. When she reached the corner, the man stepped suddenly out from the side of a building, bracing himself right in her path and almost causing her to collide into him.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing following me?” he barked.

  Chapter Seven

  What? I’m not following you,” Margaret protested weakly.

  “The hell you aren’t. You’ve been tailing me all over town since the funeral. Yes, I saw you there, you and your friend. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” Margaret knew she sounded like a guilty child, but didn’t know what else to say.

  “What’s your connection with Doug Whalen anyway?”

  “We’re just friends.”

  “He didn’t have any . . . friends.”

  Margaret stood silent, feeling the rain plaster her hair to her face. He must have noticed the rain, too, because he cut the conversation short.

  “Look, I’m a lawyer, and I can tell you that if I see you or your friend lurking around me again there will be repercussions!” He strode quickly back towards the downtown area.

  “I hope your fancy suit gets ruined,” Margaret muttered, making sure he was safely out of earshot first. Bedraggled, angry, and humiliated, she had no choice but to head to the hotel to wait for Louise.

  She didn’t have to wait long. Before she even had a chance to change out of her wet clothes, she heard a knock at the door. For one frozen moment she thought that maybe the lawyer had followed her to threaten her some more.

  “Who is it?” she asked, voice quavering.

  “It’s me, Louise. Who else would it be?” the voice on the other side said.

  Margaret opened the door to a smiling Louise, who was lookin
g relaxed and radiant.

  “Louise, what happened to you? Your hair looks different.”

  “What happened to you? You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  “Thank you. I got caught in the rain, obviously, since you were the one with the car.”

  “You’ve never heard of a cab?” Louise said, sinking into the velvet chair by the window.

  “Yes, of course, but it’s pretty hard to tail somebody in one, when that person is on foot.” She squinted at Louise and squawked in realization, “You had your hair done!”

  “You noticed. Do you like it?”

  “What—I thought you were supposed to be tailing Mrs. Whalen! Pardon me, but this was all your idea, if my memory serves me correctly. You were all hot to trot.”

  “Simmer down. That’s exactly what I was doing. I followed Mrs. Whalen all the way to the spa. Maybe she felt she needed to de-stress after the funeral, or maybe she had a standing appointment, I don’t know. In any case, I wanted to keep my eye on her without being conspicuous, so I got a facial and had my hair done while she was in the back getting a hot stone massage.”

  “You have got to be kidding.” Margaret stared daggers at Louise, her own hair dripping cold rainwater onto the plush carpet.

  “No, really. That’s the latest thing—hot stone massage. I’ve read that it’s fantastic. I don’t know if I’d ever try it myself, though.”

  “Never mind about the hot stone massage!” Margaret blustered, feeling ready to strangle Louise. “You mean to say that while I was following Mrs. Whalen’s lawyer-buddy all over town, making an idiot of myself, being threatened and humiliated, not to mention drenched in the rain, you were sitting in a beauty parlour getting a facial and a hairdo?”

  “Well, I guess it was a little more pleasant for me,” Louise admitted.

  “No, really?”

  “Well, it’s not like I planned it that way.”

  “That makes me feel so much better. Look, Louise, I’ve made enough of a fool of myself already, following your hare-brained scheme, not to mention that Mrs. Whalen’s pal is onto us and has already given me a warning. Now we’re going to drop this before we’re the ones being charged by the police for harassment.”