Written into the Grave

by Vivian Conroy

  Gunhild rubbed her face. “I must get organized for when she calls me. I need to shower and dress, put on a brave face as you say. Would you mind leaving now?”

  “Not at all,” Michael said. “I’ll call you tonight to make sure you’re coping.”

  She flashed him a thin smile. “Thank you.”

  Michael ushered Vicky out of the kitchen. On their way to the car he said, “It isn’t looking good for Kaylee.”

  “No,” Vicky agreed. “Marge told me Kaylee suggested the serial in the Gazette. She could have planned the whole thing. If Trevor is really so eager to do what she asks …”

  Michael nodded thoughtfully.

  Vicky stopped and slapped her forehead with her palm. “I forgot to ask Gunhild. About this business partner. The one who almost ran over a cyclist when he left the house in anger. Maybe he had a grudge against Goodridge worth killing for?”

  Michael said, “We can go to the Gazette’s office and run a few things through the computer to see if anything comes up.”

  Vicky nodded. “Maybe Doug is there as well, to tell us what he learned.”

  She hoped she would get a moment alone with him to explain to him that he wasn’t to do again what he had pulled at the police station or there would be trouble.

  Not just with Cash, but also with Michael, possibly leading to dismissal at the Gazette.

  Chapter Twelve

  There was just one parking space at the Gazette, reserved for the editor in chief, but when they came up, a police Jeep sat in it.

  Michael grimaced at Vicky. “Our sheriff is so strict in enforcing the no parking zones but he himself puts his car in my reserved space. Probably thinks his badge puts him above the law.”

  “Maybe it was an emergency,” Vicky suggested. An uneasy feeling knotted her stomach.

  They got out and walked to the door of the building. Michael peeked in. “Well, have I ever …” He pushed the door open and stormed in. “What do you think you’re doing?” he hollered at Cash, who was rifling through paperwork on a desk to the left. “You’re trespassing. You just broke in here …”

  “I didn’t break in here. I’m the sheriff. I let myself in to conduct an investigation.”

  “Investigation into what?” Michael’s face was red, and the veins on his temples stood out. “You could have asked.”

  “So you can shield him?”

  “Shield whom?”

  “This guy Doug Davis.” Cash stood leaning over the desk, papers in one hand, his other hand waving around to make his point. “He was at the station with me supposedly to cover the murder for the Gazette, because he would be reticent and all, but he was there with an ulterior motive.”

  “How come?” Michael asked.

  “Can’t tell.”

  “Look here, Cash.” Michael took a step closer. “You came in here without a search warrant; you didn’t call me to ask for my permission or my cooperation.”

  “Why would I ask you anything? That guy works for you.”

  “That doesn’t mean I approve of everything he did. If you say he misbehaved at the station, I’ll take it up with him. But I would have appreciated you talking to me about it instead of just rushing in to wreck my offices. And you can stop going through those papers now because that’s not Doug’s desk.”

  Cash froze mid-movement.

  Vicky suppressed laughter.

  Apparently Cash noticed for he shot at her, “This isn’t funny. You know what he has been looking into? Archibald Goodridge’s reports to the police about incidents at his house. Not here, at his other house. Broken windows, damage to his garden. And you know what else? Remember that this guy told us this morning he was sending a message to Michael here to report he was covering the case and going with us? He never sent any message to Michael.”

  “Told you so,” Michael said to Vicky with a shrug.

  Cash continued, “He did send a message, to someone we haven’t been able to trace yet, and guess what it says?”

  Vicky pursed her lips. “No idea.”

  Cash straightened up as if to deliver the message with as much pathos as possible. “It read as follows: ‘he’s dead’ with three exclamation points. ‘All is good now’ again with three exclamation points.”

  “What?” Vicky said. For a moment the ground seemed to shift under her feet. “So Doug messaged someone about the death as if …”

  “It was something to be happy about. Yes. How do you read that? He had barely heard about it.”

  Vicky tried to make sense of the revelation. “He did respond oddly when you mentioned the name Goodridge. He dropped his things, remember?”

  “Yes, and right after that he wanted to send the message. So my take on it is this: he shot Goodridge, or he is in league with whoever did and they weren’t sure Goodridge actually died from the shot wounds or the fall or both, and so when he understood from me that it was so, he sent the message to his accomplice to confirm the death of the victim and to compliment themselves on their success.”

  “Wait a minute, Cash,” Michael said. He rose onto the balls of his feet and then leaned back again, rigid with tension. “I understood from Vicky you already have two people at the station on suspicion of having committed this murder. You’re accusing them of having done it as accomplices, right? Now we have Doug and some unknown person he messaged, and you say they are accomplices in the murder. Now who really did it? Or did all four of them do it together?”

  Cash turned fiery red in the face again. “How I handle my cases is my business, not yours. And maybe they did plan it together. What do you know? Maybe this whole writing group was one big …”

  “Conspiracy to get Goodridge killed? Look, there are easier ways to kill someone if you want to get rid of him. Better ways too that don’t throw immediate suspicion on you. And Doug’s not even a member of this writing group.”

  Cash made a ‘there you go’ gesture. “I knew you’d automatically defend him, which is why I didn’t inform you. Now please leave the building and let me work.”

  Michael shook his head. “You don’t have a search warrant; you barely have anything against Doug. Some message he sent that is kind of cryptic. So I suggest you leave and look into things better before you throw your wild accusations around.”

  Cash looked at Vicky. “Tell him to leave, Vicky, before I make him leave.”

  Vicky was stunned that he’d asked her. “This is Michael’s newspaper building. I can’t …”

  Cash said, “You can explain to him I’m merely doing my job. It’s hard enough as it is without him obstructing me. Tell him.”

  “I don’t need your girlfriend to tell me anything,” Michael said tightly.

  “And I don’t need you calling me anybody’s girlfriend when I’m not,” Vicky shot back. She felt like her face was on fire, but she did want to set this right. Here and now.

  “Oh,” Michael said, narrowing his eyes as if he was zooming in on an inconsistency, “and why did Gunhild call you Vicky Rowland then? Apparently she thought you were married.”

  He waved a hand to incorporate Vicky and Cash as if that would suddenly reveal they were indeed married, without him or anybody else in Glen Cove having known a thing about it.

  Vicky’s cheeks turned even hotter. “Gunhild must have made that up.”

  It sounded super lame, and Michael scoffed. “Oh, right. She just made it all up. I bet Cash introduced you in such a way that she could do nothing but conclude you were married. Not dating, not engaged, no, married. Now I’m asking you …”

  “And even if we were married, or dating, or whatever, what is it to you?” Cash barked back. “It’s Vicky’s business whom she wants to go out with. Or do you think you can tell her what to do?”

  Michael’s expression tightened. “Absolutely not,” he said and marched to the door, pulled it open, stepped out and closed it with a resounding bang.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Vicky s
aid.

  “Me?” Cash asked. “I’m just doing my job here. One of his people was in my system behind my back digging into sensitive information and then I even find out he sent a text message saying ‘he’s dead and all is well now’ and I should just think: oh, fine, Michael will explain to me what’s up?”

  “No, I mean you suggesting that, not putting right that, not … Oh, never mind.” And Vicky rushed off as well, to look for Michael.

  In the street she saw him standing at his car, typing something onto his phone. She walked up to him slowly, suddenly feeling very awkward.

  It was not her fault Gunhild had called her Rowland and to her mind there had certainly not been a thing suggesting there was anything between Cash and her, but how to explain that to Michael without it all sounding …

  The thing was that with these sensitive subjects the more you said about it the more it seemed you were somehow fudging the facts.

  Michael just lowered the phone. He said to her, “I sent Doug a message to contact me ASAP. I want to hear his side of the story. I’m sure he has done nothing wrong.”

  Vicky swallowed. “Well, we did come into Cash’s office and we caught Doug at Cash’s desk typing away at the keyboard. He made up some excuse about what he had been looking into—I think he said he needed a legal term for his newspaper article—but he could have been lying. He could have been going through classified information. And what for?”

  Michael ignored her question and echoed, “We, huh. Cash and you seem like Siamese twins these days.”

  “I’m just helping him with the murder case. Do you think Doug will respond?”

  “Of course he will. He’ll tell me where he is so I can drive out to him and we can talk it over. I’m sure he has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

  “How can you be so sure? You barely know him. He worked with a friend of yours, abroad, you said, and …”

  Michael cut her off with a hand gesture. “I trust in my gut feeling. And my gut feeling tells me Doug’s a good guy, ambitious, keen, maybe too keen and that gets him in trouble, but he’s not here for some sinister purpose. He certainly didn’t kill someone.”

  “Then why did he message ‘he’s dead and all is well now’? What can it mean?”

  “I have no idea, but I’m going to ask him, quietly and before that bull of a sheriff rushes in and makes a complete drama out of it.”

  Michael’s phone beeped. “Ah, that has to be him.” He looked at the screen expectantly. “Oh, he says he’s onto something and will get back to me later.”

  Vicky hitched a brow. “And you just accept that?” It seemed like an excuse to her, to avoid any questions right now.

  “I’ll have to. I’m not treating him like he’s a criminal. Cash can’t even explain why Doug would be interested in incidents that happened at Goodridge’s other house. Maybe he suspected the man was under threat from someone. A stalker. Maybe he was trying to backtrack to earlier incidents to find a motive for the murder?”

  Vicky tilted her head. “That doesn’t gel. Why would a stalker who is openly terrorizing somebody by breaking windows and ruining his garden turn up here with such a complicated plan for killing Goodridge? Using the local writing group, the newspaper, the computer café … It’s all so …”

  “Maybe the person behind it is crazy, and it needn’t make any sense.” Michael clutched his phone. “Cash is just jumping to conclusions, locking up innocent people or hounding reporters doing their jobs.”

  “OK.” Vicky looked him over, jutting her chin out in a challenging gesture. “If you’re so sure Doug has done nothing wrong, then prove it. Find out where he was this morning around the time when Goodridge was shot, what he did before he came here to Glen Cove to work for you. Email your friend who recommended him to you to ask more about his background and credentials. Create a case that Cash can’t refute.”

  Michael looked her over. “You want me to check on Doug behind his back?”

  “No, all I’m saying …”

  Michael didn’t let her finish, but spat, “Yes, you do want that. You’re suggesting I should contact the friend he stayed with. You think Doug didn’t stay with him, that he lied about his past. You want me to find out where he was this morning. Do you think he was at the cliffs—shooting Archibald Goodridge?”

  Vicky cringed under his aggressive tone. “I’m not saying any of that. But if you want to convince Cash that—”

  “You’re working with Cash. To incriminate my employee. But I’m not falling for it.”

  Michael jerked his car door open and got in. “I don’t want to talk to you again anytime soon.”

  “Michael, please …” Vicky reached out, but Michael had already hit the gas and drove off. She was left alone on the curb, staring after his car, wondering where this conversation had gone so terribly wrong.

  But maybe it had already gone wrong way before that.

  When Celine had been pronounced dead, Michael had become distant. Then there was the mess surrounding the previous murder in which she had agreed with Cash that certain information should be kept from Michael for the time being. Michael had been livid about that, and they hadn’t had a good talk afterward to clear the air.

  And now this: Michael’s employee under suspicion because of his actions and Michael feeling like Cash was building a case against him where there was none.

  Michael had admitted to her that Doug reminded him so much of his younger self.

  Vicky took a deep breath. There was nothing to be done about it right now. She could only hope that Michael would calm down and see that he had overreacted.

  Maybe he would even talk to Doug and find out why he had been looking into that classified information. Once it was clear Doug had nothing to do with the murder, Michael and she might be able to discuss it again without falling all over each other.

  In the meantime Trevor and Kaylee were still being held for their supposed involvement in the murder. Vicky desperately wanted a chat with her team to get their take on Goodridge’s death at the cliffs.

  Before it became an even bigger muddle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Just as Vicky was about to enter the Country Gift Shop, Diane came racing down Main Street on a red mountain bike. She gasped for breath as she halted along the curb. “Glad to have caught you. I wanted to ask about Gunhild. I know this is a very bad time, but I do need to know if she’s still intending to deliver the sculpture to the auction. We’re putting all items up on a website and in a leaflet to gain interest and I would like it to be as accurate as possible. People who come out to bid on an item that isn’t there will be upset. And Gunhild’s contribution will be a big draw so we do want to mention it.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’ll deliver. She has it done, showed it to me this morning. When I was there with Cash to tell her about her husband’s murder.”

  Diane’s expression tightened.

  Vicky bet her mind was going back to the pain they had experienced as a family when Diane’s sister Celine had gone missing. It had taken over twenty-three years to clear up what had really happened to her.

  Vicky said quickly, “Anyway, I think she’s still cooperating for the auction, so you can safely put the sculpture on your list. It’s a dolphin.”

  “Oh, good.” Diane relaxed again, wiping a lock of blonde hair away from her face. “When I was at her home a few weeks ago, I was really surprised to see her older work already carries the characteristics of her latest pieces. I had never realized that a certain … individual touch is so clear in an artist’s work. Like a signature really.”

  She turned her bike around. “Well, I’d better go find Alain. He got us these bikes because he wants to cycle down to an old fort he discovered on some map of the region. I think it used to be a gold depot, once upon a time.” She winked. “You can never get the treasure hunter out of a guy.”

  Vicky smiled. “Have a wonderful time. And don’t worry about Gunhild. Eve
rybody’s keeping an eye on her to make sure she’s all right in these hard times.”

  “Thanks.” Diane got on the bike again. “One of her pieces reminded me strongly of something I saw when I lived in Europe. Must be twenty years ago. I had just met Alain, and he took me to Oslo for Valentine’s Day. It was quite cold so we tried to get in and out of museums and art shops all of the time. There was this amazing exhibition of animals made by athletes. I remember because I was kind of jealous. Imagine being sporty and also artistic. At the time I rather felt like I was neither.”

  She laughed. “See you later!”

  And Diane hit the pedals and vanished quickly down the street.

  Vicky waved after her. An exhibition in Europe, in Oslo, two decades ago. Well, it wasn’t impossible as Gunhild was Scandinavian and had come to the US later in her life. According to Kaylee, Goodridge had even called her his Norwegian dream, so that seemed to fit.

  But athletes?

  No. With a lung condition it didn’t seem likely you could do sports at a professional level. Diane had to be mistaken about the similarity between that artwork seen in Oslo and Gunhild’s work.

  Shrugging it off, Vicky entered the store. Marge was just helping a customer choose between three scarves she had selected from the rack and spread on top of a navy blazer which she had put on the counter.

  “I think,” Marge said pensively, “the blue in this one goes very well with the color of the blazer, but the pink flowers are a bit of a contrast. Maybe the shells would make a quieter whole? If you want to wear this to work …”

  The customer nodded. “Yes, such a silk scarf is exactly the thing I need when I’m giving my presentation for the entire department. The shells it is then.”

  Marge smiled. “Wonderful. Shall I gift-wrap it? No extra trouble, and it does look nice.”

  “Yes, please. Oh, I see you have books too.”

  “Feel free to browse. We’ve got the largest cozy mystery selection in the county. The newest releases are on the middle shelf. Yes, those are the ones.”