Death and Honesty

by Cynthia Riggs

  “Please, Mr. Ashpine. Let Mrs. Trumbull talk.”

  “She’s lying!”

  “Enough!” snapped Casey. “Sit down!”

  “Delilah Sampson wasn’t the only person to get an inflated bill,” said Victoria.

  “I’m new at the job. Honest mistakes, all of them!” cried Oliver.

  Junior Norton eased Oliver back onto the couch. Oliver leaned forward and dropped his head in his hands. He looked up suddenly. “I’ll sue you for false arrest!” Oliver cried. “Undue force!”

  “You’re not under arrest, sir,” said Casey. “We’ll listen to what you have to say, and you’re entitled to have a lawyer present, if you want.”

  “I don’t need a lawyer! I haven’t done anything!”

  Casey turned away from him. “We need to talk in private, Victoria.” She glanced at Junior Norton, who raised his hand in acknowledgment.

  Victoria and she went into the hall and closed the door to the lounge behind them.

  “It’s your word against his, Victoria. You claim Ashpine was smothering Henry, he claims he was fixing the pillow. Let’s hope Henry recovers. If he does, he can speak for himself.”

  “Don’t let Oliver back in the same room with Henry,” Victoria insisted.

  “I’ll have Henry switched to another room and one of our guys will be on duty until we sort this out.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Victoria usually slept soundly through the night. But tonight, after witnessing Oliver Ashpine’s attempt on Henry’s life, she woke up a little after three feeling uneasy. He was an embezzler. The files she’d copied from his office proved that. But because of technicalities, the police would have to obtain a search warrant to get access to his files. An embezzler who could smother a helpless invalid in a hospital bed could easily have killed three other people. He was a cold-blooded killer, she was convinced. The hospital would release him. He wasn’t really sick.

  If Henry were to die … She didn’t even want to think about that.

  She got out of bed and stood by the west window overlooking Doane’s pasture on the other side of the lane. Her room was bright. Pale moonlight cast a shadow of the window frame on the floor. A dog barked in the village. A rooster crowed, and she thought about Jordan Rivers and Lambert Willoughby, and how angry the two had been over something as simple as a crowing rooster.

  The early-morning chill worked its way through her thin nightgown. She pulled the down comforter off her bed, tossed it over her shoulders, and sat by the window in her grandmother’s rocking chair and gazed out at the peaceful view of the pasture, the village beyond, and the moonlit church steeple.

  In the wood lot next to the pasture an owl cried, an eerie who-oooo, who-oooo. A car went by on the Edgartown Road. At this time of night there were few cars, and the only other sounds were the sounds of her childhood—barking dogs and crowing cocks.

  She’d been up more than an hour and was feeling sleepy enough to go back to bed when she heard a car slow down on the road and turn into her drive.

  Hurriedly, she slipped on wool socks and her shoes with the hole cut out for her sore toe, buttoned her sweater over her nightgown, and went into the study that adjoined her bedroom. Through the south-facing window she could see the car pull up next to Elizabeth’s convertible and stop.

  Victoria decided to wait until she knew who’d come calling this late before turning on the lights. She found her flashlight and, shielding its beam, went down the front stairs, holding the banister tightly.

  From the dining room window she saw the car more clearly. Moonlight glinted off something reflective on the side of the car. Strips of fluttering duct tape. Lee’s ancient car.

  Something had to be seriously wrong to bring Lee out so long past midnight. She switched on the kitchen light, filled the teakettle, set it on the stove, and waited.

  She waited for several minutes. A car door slammed. Moments later there were heavy footfalls on the stone steps leading to the entry, much heavier than she imagined Lee’s could be.

  Who would come to her house at this time? And in Lee’s car? Darcy would drive Delilah’s limousine. Howland would drive his station wagon. She couldn’t think of anyone else.

  Someone pounded on the door and Victoria stood up and reached for her stick.

  “Who is it?”

  “I’ve got to talk to you, Miz Trumbull,” demanded a male voice she didn’t immediately recognize.

  “The door’s not locked.” Victoria held her stick by the end, ready to swing it, and backed up so the kitchen table was between her and whoever this was.

  The intruder paused. Victoria could see only a silhouette through the glass panes of the door, backlit by moonlight.

  The teakettle whistled. She’d overfilled it again. Boiling water bubbled out of the spout onto the hot stove. There was a blue flash and the kitchen light went out.

  Victoria felt around for her flashlight. “Come in!” she called to the person at the door. She aimed at where she thought his face would be when he stepped up into the kitchen. As he opened the door, she switched on the light.

  The intruder shouted, “Goddamn!” and shielded his eyes with his forearm. He was wearing a red baseball cap with “Red Sox” stitched in bright blue.

  The beam cast eerie shadows on his lower face, and it took Victoria a moment to recognize who it was. She reached for her chair and sat down, holding her stick in one hand, the flashlight aimed steadily at his face in the other.

  It was Lambert Willoughby, brother of the murdered Tillie, son-in-law of the murdered Lucy Pease, and owner of the rooster named Chickee.

  “What are you doing here? And why are you driving Lee’s car?”

  Willoughby shut the door behind him. “What happened, you trip the circuit breaker?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Where’s the breaker box?”

  “Why are you driving Lee’s car?”

  “It’s my sister’s car. Tillie. She loaned it to Lee. Can I talk to you?”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “After four. Could you stop shining that damned light in my eyes?”

  “The circuit box is on the cookroom wall.” Victoria pointed with the flashlight.

  “How about giving me the light?”

  Victoria sighed and keeping the table between them, pointed the flashlight beam at the breaker box, and Willoughby opened it.

  “Expect me to fix it by feel, do you?”

  “That should be simple enough,” said Victoria, keeping her distance.

  Willoughby muttered something she didn’t understand. There was a click, and the kitchen light came back on.

  “Thank you,” said Victoria, blinking in the sudden brilliance. She pointed to one of the gray-painted chairs and told him to sit. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, once he was seated. And then, “Would you like a cup of tea? The water’s hot.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He took off his hat, smoothed the bright blue letters, and put the hat back on. “Sox are looking pretty good this year.”

  Victoria looked blank. “I’ve got several kinds of tea,” she said.

  “Herbal tea, if you’ve got it.”

  Neither spoke until after Victoria brewed the tea in the blue china teapot and poured it into mugs.

  “You got honey or something?”

  “On the counter under the window.” Victoria could hear a car and then a truck on the Edgartown Road, and saw a glow in the eastern sky. “There are spoons in the drawer.”

  She sat again and waited. “Well? What’s so important you had to come by in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s morning. I’m on my way to work. You seem like a smart woman,” said Willoughby, squeezing honey into his tea. He returned to the gray-painted chair. “I gotta tell you some stuff that’s been bugging me, but it’s in confidence, okay?”

  “That depends,” said Victoria, puzzled.

  “I trust you not to blab, Miz Trumbull.”

 
“I don’t blab,” said Victoria.

  “You told the cops about the assessors’ scam, but they’re not doing anything, right?”

  “They’re looking into it.”

  “You know better than to believe that, right?”

  “Go on,” said Victoria.

  “You know what you’re talking about. Those old biddies skimmed off I don’t know how many thousands over the years. Nice investments they got stashed someplace.”

  “Did Tillie know about the scam?”

  “My sister wasn’t all peaches and cream,” said Willoughby, “but she was some smart. She knew, all right. She went along with them, happily taking her share, saving it up. She wanted to be a movie star ever since she was a little kid. Gonna move to California one day. She figured she needed money for a couple of years’ living expenses.” He looked down into his tea and stirred it absently. “Plus acting lessons. She had it all planned out. That’s where I thought she’d gone, when everybody figured she’d run off with that Edgartown man.”

  “I think I see where this is leading,” said Victoria. “It’s leading to Henry True, movie producer.”

  “Exactly right. He had her bamboozled. Me and the wife told Tillie the reverend was a phony, but she didn’t believe us. Tillie talked with the wife’s mother …”

  “Lucy Pease?”

  “Right. They was close, Lucy and Tillie. She told Tillie that what the reverend was filming was art and would look great when she got to Hollywood.”

  “I found the DVD Tillie showed Lucy,” said Victoria.

  He looked up. “Is that right? Where? We searched every place we could think of.”

  “In a metal box, buried under your chicken coop. Oliver Ashpine’s Jack Russell dug it up.”

  “Bertie. Yeah,” said Willoughby. “Damn mutt.”

  “Did you want to see the DVD?”

  “I don’t know that it would do any good. Pretty bad?”

  Victoria thought before she answered. “Suggestive. Not really bad. Howland Atherton tracked the recording to a company that Henry True owns.”

  “Bastard—‘scuse me, ma’am.”

  “Quite all right,” said Victoria. “I feel the same way about Reverend True.”

  “Would that stand up in court? What you found out?”

  “You mean about Henry True producing pornographic films? I think so,” said Victoria, sipping her own tea. She looked at him over the steam. “Would you be willing to testify, if this ever goes to court? About the assessors’ embezzling tax money and about Henry True luring young women into posing for his films?”

  “It’s more than Henry True getting my sister to do porn videos, Miz Trumbull.” Willoughby set his mug on the kitchen table. “He killed my sister.”

  Victoria took a deep breath at the same time she swallowed a mouthful of tea and coughed.

  “You okay, Miz Trumbull?”

  Victoria nodded and coughed a few more times. “Henry True didn’t kill your sister, and I can prove it. Oliver Ashpine did.”

  “No, ma‘am. Beg to differ. You just look at the timing. Knowing my sister, she put the touch on the reverend.” He continued in a falsetto, “‘Reverend True, sir, if you could advance me a little money, say, plane fare to California, I won’t tell my brother about the dirty videos you made of me.”’ He dropped back to his normal voice. “He knew if she told me, I’d beat the shit out of the son-of-a-bitch—excuse me, ma’am.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Victoria cleared her throat a few more times. “Whoever killed your sister killed Lucy and Henry’s pilot.”

  “Seems that way,” said Willoughby. “Only possible suspect is the goddamned Reverend True.”

  “The night the pilot was killed, Henry was with Delilah.”

  “Thought she’d kicked him out.”

  “When Chief O’Neill and I arrived, the chauffeur had to wake up Delilah. He saw Henry hurry back to the guesthouse. They apparently had a temporary reconciliation.”

  “Sneaky bastard. He could’ve slipped her a sleeping pill and snuck out to do the dirty deed. She’d never know, and he’d have an airtight alibi.”

  “No one knows exactly when your sister died, only that it was about five months ago.”

  “And what have the cops done? Nothing, that’s what.”

  “They’re doing everything they can,” said Victoria, feeling that she ought to defend the police. “In five months a lot of evidence disappears. I’m convinced that Oliver lured her up to the attic and killed her there, knowing it would be some time before she was found. He knew he’d get her job and the money that went with it.”

  Willoughby lifted his cap and scratched his head. “A lot of money, a lot. But not enough to kill anyone for.”

  “Some people kill simply to keep others quiet,” said Victoria. “Had you heard that Oliver tried to smother Henry in his hospital bed last night?”

  Willoughby looked interested. “Henry in the hospital?”

  “His wife bludgeoned him with a lamp. I arrived as Oliver was holding a pillow over his face.”

  Willoughby laughed. “Dead?”

  “Henry’s alive but unconscious. I haven’t heard whether or not there’s been brain damage.”

  “Hard to tell with him. Send them both to prison.”

  “We can agree on that. Henry as purveyor of pornographic films and Oliver for embezzlement and murder. If the state demands an independent audit, we can put the three assessors away, too.”

  Willoughby coughed and stood up abruptly, and Victoria suddenly thought of his large new house. He checked his watch. “Got to get going.” He adjusted his hat. The sun had come up and was sending bright beams into the kitchen. “You’re dead wrong about Ashpine. True killed the three of them.”

  “Why would he want to kill Ellen?”

  “You mean the assessor? She wasn’t killed.”

  “Lucy was killed in Ellen’s house. Oliver mistook Lucy for Ellen.”

  “You got that wrong,” said Willoughby. “You knew, didn’t you, Lucy was my mother-in-law?”

  “Yes, I know. I’m so sorry about her death.”

  “No great loss, the old biddy. Lucy and Tillie was close, like that.” He held up two fingers. “Tillie always wanted to be a movie star, ever since she was a little kid. Told Lucy the reverend was giving her a chance to break into the big time, acting in his videos.”

  “Didn’t Tillie realize what kind of movies they were?”

  “No, ma’am. She didn’t want to see them as anything but art films. She’d only got as far as prancing around in her underwear, sticking her finger in her mouth and wiggling her butt. We told her, the wife and me, the reverend was making dirty movies, and the next one he’d film of her would be with her buck naked. She got all upset at that.”

  “And turned to Lucy, I suppose?”

  “Shut us out completely. Tillie showed the DVD to Lucy and then bragged to us about how proud Lucy was of her art. She said me and the wife didn’t understand ‘cul-cha.”’ He looked sideways at Victoria. “I don’t know about you, Miz Trumbull, but I know a dirty movie when I see one.”

  After Willoughby left, Victoria went upstairs again. It was still early, not yet six o’clock, but there was no point in going back to bed. She dressed in her worn corduroys, made her bed, and returned to the kitchen. Elizabeth wouldn’t be up for at least another hour.

  McCavity stalked into the kitchen from his spot in front of the fireplace, rubbed against her legs, then seated himself next to his empty bowl and waited.

  Victoria fixed her own breakfast, after her cat was fed, and settled herself at the cookroom table with her bowl of cereal and the latest edition of the Island Enquirer. The events at the hospital had happened only last night, so there’d be no coverage. She’d write something in her column about Henry’s near brush with death without actually accusing Oliver. She took an envelope out of the wastebasket and jotted down notes while she ate.

  While Victoria was writing up her notes, Hope
went into Ocypete and Ellen’s hospital room with the lab results.

  “Elderberries?” said Ellen. “Elderberries? I’ve eaten elderberry jelly all my life and never had any trouble.”

  “Me, too,” said Ocypete.

  “Definitely elderberries,” said Hope. “In the candy Miss Moon brought you. Here.” She handed Ellen a paper. “I looked this up on the Internet and printed it out. I thought you might be interested.”

  “‘Uncooked unripe berries and to a lesser extent uncooked ripe berries may cause significant GI upset,”’ Ellen read out loud. She held her finger at her place and looked over her glasses. “GI?”

  “Gastrointestinal,” said Hope.

  Ellen moved her finger along the page of fine print. “This sounds exactly like what hit us. ‘Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The leaves, roots, stems and bark are also GI irritants.”’

  Ellen passed the printout to Ocypete.

  “I spoke to Miss Moon,” said Hope. “I feel responsible. I shouldn’t have allowed her to bring candy into the hospital.”

  “She’d have taken it to us at our homes and we’d have eaten all of it there,” Ocypete said. “You probably saved our lives.”

  “What did Selena have to say for herself?” asked Ellen.

  “She said she’d made up her own recipe and wanted to retain the vitamins by not overcooking it,” said Hope. “She ground up the berries in her food processor, strained out the seeds and stems, and used the juice, sugar, and unflavored gelatin to make the candy.”

  “She wanted to kill us,” said Ellen. “No wonder she wouldn’t eat any herself.”

  “I don’t think elderberries have ever been fatal,” Hope said. “She was terribly upset.”

  “Not as upset as we were,” said Ellen.

  “The candy tasted wonderful,” said Ocypete. “You’d think poison would taste like poison.”

  “Miss Moon had no idea the berries could be a problem,” said Hope. “She’s made elderberry jelly and wine for years.”

  Ocypete sighed. “Thank goodness it wasn’t a disgruntled taxpayer. I was so afraid …”

  Hope checked her clipboard. “If you’re feeling okay, Doc Jeffers said you can go home this afternoon.”