A Second Helping of Murder

by Christine Wenger

  I scrounged up another key to Cottage Eight, as either Ty or the state police had taken Mr. Burrows’s. I grabbed a flashlight, remembering that the newly painted forest green shutters had all been closed and hooked shut by the cops.

  Instead of walking right to Eight, I went to the end of the line of cottages. If Ty was watching, he would think that I was going to Twelve. If I walked close to the front of all the cottages, maybe he couldn’t see me heading for Eight.

  Why didn’t I just head for the back of Eight and then the left side of it to get to the front?

  I grunted at my lack of Nancy Drew genes.

  I ran up the three steps to Eight and hoped the crime scene tape would stretch as I opened the door.

  My heart pounded when a couple of the strands of yellow tape snapped. I held my breath and sucked my stomach in to squeeze in. If only I could do something with my D-cup boobs.

  I was inside.

  I closed the door and clicked on the flashlight, glad that I’d brought it. I looked around at the mess, particularly the grayish dust all over. What on earth?

  Oh! Fingerprint dust.

  The cops had left the typewriter on the floor where I saw it before, lying facedown. I stared at the bloodstain, my inner neat freak wondering how I’d ever get it off the plank floor.

  Poor Mr. Burrows.

  I hadn’t noticed before when I was standing in the cottage, paralyzed, that there were no dirty dishes around. Probably Clyde or Max had taken them away or maybe the police had. I sure hoped that Mr. Burrows’s last dinner was enjoyable.

  Looking around the little cottage, I tried to see it with fresh eyes. The biggest room held a full kitchen against the wall, a wooden table, and four chairs, and there was a twin bed in the corner.

  A small bedroom held a queen bed, a nightstand, and a dresser.

  Another bedroom had two double bunk beds.

  The bathroom had a shower stall with a blue curtain, no tub, another dresser, a closet, a toilet, a sink, and a medicine cabinet. It was the old-style medicine cabinet with a mirror on the front and made of white metal.

  And it, too, was covered in fingerprint dust.

  I opened the medicine cabinet by the corner. There were just some cheap plastic shavers, a can of shaving gel, and a plastic container of deodorant.

  The medicine cabinet was rusty on the bottom, and it looked as though someone had pushed the rust with either a finger or some kind of tool.

  Or maybe it was the natural way of rust, but I didn’t think so.

  This medicine cabinet needed to be replaced. I wished that Juanita’s cousin who had prepared the cottages for me would have said something.

  I shut the mirrored door, and the whole thing slanted. It must be missing a screw.

  I made a mental note to tell Clyde to replace it before it fell off the wall and someone got hurt. Then again, there was no rush. Who’d want to rent this cottage when the word got out that a murder had been committed here?

  Going back into the main room, I pulled out a chair from the table and sat down.

  The old typewriter was still on the floor upside down. I wanted to put it upright or even move it onto the table the way Mr. Burrows had had it, but I didn’t dare.

  I studied the inside of the cottage. It was paneled in white wainscoting and throughout the years guests had etched messages into the walls—mostly their initials or their last name and a date. There were some hearts with initials.

  I remember Uncle Porky hating that his tenants scratched up his cottages, but Aunt Stella thought it was fun. She said that it was a tradition—a type of history. She said, “Look at all the pioneers who wrote on Signature Rock in Wyoming. Our cottages are a history of those who stayed with us.”

  Uncle Porky didn’t agree, so he had Clyde and Max paint the wainscoting every couple of years.

  Smiling, I remembered etching Trixie M. loves Tim P. underneath the sink in Cottage Four. That was Timmy Preston, our paperboy, who had been at least a freshman in high school, an older man. I had such a crush on him.

  I wondered if Claire Jacobson ever scratched her initials onto this cottage.

  With my trusty flashlight, I started inspecting the wall by the door. The mystery bus woman was right to carry around a magnifying glass. I’d have to find one.

  With any luck, the hardware or hunting store in town carried magnifying glasses, or maybe the dollar store would have them. If not, I’d have to drive to Watertown or Syracuse, where there were more stores.

  Until then, I read every scratch, square inch by square inch. G. K. loves J. C. JACK & ROSE married 1940. Marry me, Ginny B. Michele loves Martin. I hate you, Mary C. Peg loves Lance 1997 . . . On and on it went.

  I kept reading and made it to the kitchen window before I sat down again. My eyes were getting tired. Maybe the daylight would be better, but that wasn’t going to happen until the cops released the cottage.

  What could the cops have missed?

  Would Mr. Burrows have etched something into the wall?

  No way. He didn’t seem the type. It was more of a kid thing anyway.

  I gasped. My heart started racing. Would Mr. Burrows have stayed in this cottage when he was a kid? Was that why he asked for Eight?

  A lot of people who returned requested the same cottage year after year. Maybe Mr. Burrows really did stay here when he was young. That would explain his obsession with the cottage.

  I’d look for his initials, too. Or maybe he’d left a message.

  Maybe it was a dumb thing to do, but what else did I have to go on?

  I got up, flashlight in hand, and went back to the bathroom. The loose, rusty medicine cabinet was niggling at my brain. I didn’t remember the rust being so worn down when I’d inspected the cottage for tourist season.

  Did I dare move it? It was already dusted for prints, so I thought it was okay to touch. I removed Mr. Burrows’s stuff from the cabinet and set it on the dresser. Then I gave the cabinet a little push to the right, then a bigger push to the right. The cabinet that used to hang vertical was now horizontal.

  There was a hole in the wall! And etchings.

  I studied the printing from several angles, moving my flashlight in different directions.

  There it was: CJ. It had to be Claire Jacobson!

  I looked for more, ran my finger over the wood.

  C.J. loves B.

  Damn. I couldn’t make out the initial of the last name. It was painted over! Who did Claire love back then?

  “B” who?

  I kept looking for more, but nothing. Then I shone my flashlight down the hole. Nope. Couldn’t see a thing.

  “Beatrix Matkowski, what the hell are you doing in here?”

  I jumped, scared out of my wits. My heart pounded in my chest like the dough mixer on high.

  Why did he keep doing that?

  Turning, I looked into the furious face of Deputy Sheriff Ty Brisco. His hands were on his hips, his legs were spread apart, and he was biting his lip. The vein in his neck seemed ready to pop out of his skin.

  “No one calls me Beatrix except my aunt, Aunt Beatrix.”

  “I don’t give a damn.” He took a couple of deep breaths, looking up at the rough-hewn beams and boards of the ceiling.

  I think he was praying.

  “Ty, I couldn’t sit still and do nothing.”

  “I believe that we had this discussion before. I can’t believe that you crossed this crime scene tape, too. Didn’t we just have this discussion? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I’m losing business. That’s what I’m losing.” Yeah, okay, that was true, but in my heart of hearts I wanted to get to the bottom of both murders.

  His nostrils flared like a rodeo bull’s. He pointed to the door. “Out.”

  “I found something, Ty. Listen to me. I found initials behi
nd the medicine cabinet. And there’s a hole in the wall. I wonder if something was hidden there. Maybe something was dropped down the hole.”

  He didn’t budge, but his shoulders relaxed a bit.

  “Don’t you want to see what I found? It’s amazing. I think it could be a clue.”

  “Burrows?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I shrugged. “But maybe Claire Jacobson.”

  “Let’s see what you found.” He walked toward me.

  I moved the medicine cabinet and showed him Claire’s initials, and the lone B. He didn’t seem impressed. He was more impressed by the ragged hole in the wall.

  “Why would she put her initials behind the cabinet?” he asked.

  “Maybe the cabinet wasn’t there twenty-five years ago. Maybe it was hung later. Or maybe Claire thought it was a secretive, fun thing to do. She probably didn’t want anyone to see her name linked with a guy. You know how parents can be or siblings . . . They tease, or so I hear.”

  What did I know? I was an only child.

  “Did Claire Jacobson have any siblings?” Ty asked. “I can’t remember from all the reports.” He pointed at my flashlight. “Can I borrow that?”

  I handed it to him. “Hmm . . . you know, I think she had a brother, a younger brother. I remember . . .” I paused, reaching way back to a cobwebbed corner of my memory. “Yes, a younger brother.” It was all coming back to me. “His name was Phillip, I think, but they called him Phil. That last summer, he was six or seven, I’d guess. Phil would rather sit at the picnic table and scribble or color, and he hated to walk on sand with bare feet, and he didn’t particularly like the water. He’d only go in the lake if he could get onto a vinyl raft on the shore so he wouldn’t get wet, and Claire would float him in.”

  Ty peered down the hole in the wall. “Interesting. What kid doesn’t like splashing in the water?”

  “Phil didn’t. He was kind of fussy and liked to be by himself.”

  “Poor boy. He missed out on being a kid.”

  “That’s what Claire thought, too. She tried to get him out of his shell. She was so good with him. It was almost like she was his mother instead of his sister.”

  Ty tried another angle with the flashlight as he looked down the hole. “Didn’t his parents pay any attention to Phil?”

  “They were quite a bit older and were always off fishing.”

  “Too bad, but it seems like Claire was a great older sister.”

  “She was, and Phil adored her.” I leaned against the dresser. “You know, Phil had the strangest eyes. They were such a pale light blue. I’ve never seen eyes that color except for—”

  Why hadn’t I made the connection before?

  I sank to the floor.

  Ty must have heard the thump when my butt connected with the wooden floor. He spun around. “Trixie, wha—? Are you okay?”

  “Pale blue eyes. David Burrows and Phil Jacobson. They have—had—the same color eyes.”

  “Coincidental. Probably a good chunk of the population has light blue eyes.”

  “Pale blue!”

  “Okay, pale blue.”

  “And Mr. Burrows was fussy and private, and he’d been here before.”

  “So have I,” Ty said. “That’s another coincidence. My family vacationed here since I was seven years old until my baby brother started college. Then I returned at least once a year for the salmon.”

  Coincidences? It was more than that. Little things were starting to add up.

  “I think that David Burrows was really Phil Jacobson.”

  “I can check it out.”

  “Will you let me know, Ty?”

  “I think I can give you that information, but I’m not quite sure. I’ll have to wait until it’s officially released.”

  Wyatt Earp was getting on my last nerve. Law enforcement work was so darn slow.

  “What about his car, Ty? I’m sure you ran the registration and everything on his car.”

  “It was a rental. He rented it under David Burrows.”

  “But doesn’t the rental company make you show your license. Didn’t he do that?”

  Ty hesitated. “Yeah, we checked all that. He was licensed under David Burrows.”

  “But anyone can get a fake license, right?”

  “Not just anyone.”

  “But it can be done.”

  He shrugged. “Of course it can be done.”

  “And David Burrows appeared just when Claire’s body was found, or should I say that Phil Jacobson appeared right when his sister Claire’s body was found? And he specifically asked for Cottage Eight, Ty. More coincidences?”

  “Maybe not.”

  Hurrah! “I think you’re starting to think like me.”

  “That’ll be the day.” He grinned in that cowboy way of his, all white teeth and twinkling turquoise eyes.

  “I think that Phil was investigating Claire’s death, and obviously someone wanted to stop him.” I paused as I realized what I was suggesting. “The killer. One killer.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, but it’s just a gut feeling. There’s no real proof yet.”

  I was on a roll. Looking at the hole in the wall, I couldn’t contain myself any longer. If I ruined the crime scene, I might as well pack for Bedford Hills, but this was my cottage and my hole, and the whole hole was missed by the cops.

  Moving Ty aside, I put both of my hands on the ragged edges of the wainscoting and gave four yanks.

  “Uh, Trixie . . . ,” Ty warned, but it was halfhearted. He wanted to see what was in the wall as much as I did. He probably could have done the same thing that I was doing, but Ty did everything by the book and would call back the crime scene people.

  But not me.

  I gave another yank but couldn’t move the wood. Frustrated, I kicked it with my sneakered foot and it splintered.

  Ty pushed me aside and gave it a kick himself. The boards splintered more and we both pulled, tossing the mess of wood onto the floor.

  “There’s nothing there,” he said. “Damn.”

  “Hand me the flashlight, please.”

  He handed me the flashlight and I knelt down. There was a little piece of paper in the corner of one of the vertical two-by-six boards where it met the floor.

  Nervously, I picked up the paper.

  “It’s a picture, Ty. A picture!” I looked at it, and Ty looked over my shoulder. “What on earth?”

  “Is that what I think it is?” Ty whistled long and low.

  Chapter 7

  “A sonogram,” Ty said.

  It was faded and had some water damage, but there was no doubt that it was a sonogram. Claire had been pregnant?

  I shook my head. “It was hidden in the wall. Probably Claire hid it. Maybe she was going to retrieve it later but never got the chance.” I was still staring at the photo in my hand.

  “That’s my guess.”

  “I don’t think so, Ty. Maybe a guy hid it in the wall.”

  He shook his head. “It isn’t something that a guy would do. He might show the picture around to show off that he’s a stud, but it’s a girl thing to hide it like that.”

  “There’s something written on the back. I can barely make it out. It looks like Dr. Edward Francis, August eight—no, it’s August three—nine a.m.”

  “Must be her next appointment,” Ty said.

  “Then all we have to do is find out who had an appointment with Dr. Francis at nine on August third, twenty-five years ago.”

  “You’re thinking that Claire Jacobson might have been pregnant when she died, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” I thought back. The Claire of my childhood fantasies would have saved herself for Prince Charming. But hadn’t I learned the real world is never as perfect
as you thought when you were a child?

  Maybe she’d met someone and loved him. No. She was so sweet and trusting, he probably seduced her.

  I was probably reacting to my very Catholic upbringing that was drummed into our heads by an army of St. Mary Marys: No rolling up the waistband of your school uniform to make your skirt shorter. Your green knee socks must go to the knee. You will be fined a quarter for the mission if you don’t wear the standard black and white saddle shoes, and make sure you polish them. And no sex without marriage.

  “I’ll phone Hal Manning and see if he had a clue about Claire being pregnant during the autopsy. If he did, he would have told me about it,” Ty said.

  If that sonogram belonged to Claire, she would have been seventeen, pregnant, and all alone. Yet she never stopped smiling. She had to be in love.

  The roll of thunder made me jump. Another storm was coming in. Thunder flashed through the cottage, and I heard a noisy creak of wood. It was probably the shutters outside, but I suddenly felt uneasy. I was with the toughest cop in the whole state, but not even Ty Brisco could stop a speeding bullet.

  Suddenly I wanted to get out of Cottage Eight and all of its secrets.

  “I’m out of here, Ty.”

  “I’ll second that.” He opened the door for me and lifted the yellow tape. I ducked under it. He tried to make it taut against the door, but he didn’t have the tools.

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked.

  “Tired of watching me?”

  “Yes, actually, I am. I was just hoping you’d save me the trouble.”

  “I think I’m going to make an appointment with Dr. Francis. I suddenly feel sick.”

  “I’ve never heard of Dr. Francis, but I think I’ll go with you.”

  “I work alone,” I said.

  “The hell you do.”

  “It was worth a try.”

  We walked to his SUV and drove back downtown.

  * * *

  The one and only doctor’s office in town was on Broadway Street and had a white and black sign out front: Dr. Fayton Huff. It was located in an old Victorian house, not unlike mine, but it had more gingerbread trim and was painted in various hues of lavender and yellow. Pretty.