by Jean Flowers
“We’ll arrange it for your convenience. The more heads, the better, right?”
“Right.” Though the saying wasn’t necessarily true if the extra one was as uninformed as mine.
“Jules said that this”—he tapped the ledger sheets—“was just the beginning. It’ll take him a while to get everything together, which is understandable. I made sure he knows I’m not auditing his work. I wouldn’t know where to begin even if I wanted to. I’m just looking for something that might lead somewhere. Who knows? Maybe we owe somebody and they . . .” He stopped, unable to complete the thought.
We left it vague enough that I felt I could be at the meeting if only for moral support.
“Let me know when you need me,” I said, hoping for so many reasons that the time would never come. First, because a swift solution of Daisy’s case would be best all around. Preferably, today. Second, because I didn’t want to annoy the chief of police by doing anything that resembled investigating. The third, fourth, and following reasons were the same as the second.
“Thanks,” said Cliff, who wasn’t privy to my mental reservations. He extracted his copies of the lists of Daisy’s friends and customers. “I thought we could start by splitting up these names and talking to as many of her friends and acquaintances as we can.”
“Don’t you think the police are doing that already?”
Cliff grunted. “Maybe.”
I didn’t argue but simply agreed to take A through M and put the folder aside for later viewing.
Not a good sign. As Daisy used to say, “It takes a long time to finish a quilt you’re not working on.”
* * *
As soon as Cliff left, I put my container of shrimp scampi in the small fridge behind the post office boxes. Dinner, I hoped. For now, with no time even for my peanut butter sandwich, I unwrapped an energy bar and opened the doors for the retail afternoon.
The afternoon line was steady; no crowds, but I didn’t have much downtime, either. Now and then I glanced at the folder on my desk and thought about what it would mean for me to act on its contents. I took a minute to reach over and place the manila folder in a drawer, out of sight. Although it was labeled only CASSIE, in Cliff’s careful printing, I imagined if Sunni dropped by she’d be able to see through the cardstock to the notes on Daisy’s murder, and I guessed that I was heading for an obstruction of justice charge. Or if Ben, my bored mentor and predecessor, dropped by, he might feel free to open it. Ben was having a hard time with retirement and was known to poke around and offer his assistance at random, but he’d never open my desk.
Midway through the afternoon, I noticed Molly Boyd in the lobby, wrestling with a couple of packages. She’d shed her crutches and was down to using a cane, a flashy pink paisley one. I heard an interchange between her and the young woman behind her in a UMass sweatshirt. I couldn’t help eavesdropping while I waited for my current customer to complete a customs form for international shipping.
“I’m glad to see you’re walking better,” said the woman, whom I recognized as a barista from Mahican’s café.
“Yes, thanks,” Molly responded.
The barista pointed to Molly’s bandaged ankle. “How did you do it?”
“In the storm last Monday. My cat got out and I was chasing her and tripped over the little wall around my garden.” Molly gave a weak smile and shrugged. “Dumb accident.”
“Aren’t they all?” the barista asked.
Something clicked in my head and I flashed back to our quilting session on Tuesday evening. I could have sworn that at that time Molly had blamed her new Adirondack chair for the storm-related accident. Strange that she would tell the barista a different story two days later. The cat made me do it?
It was Liv who was unhappy with Daisy’s decision to stock greeting cards, the mainstay of her own shop next door. I knew that Molly and Liv were friends, outside of the quilting circle. Was Molly also unhappy with Daisy? I asked myself now, faced with her suspicious alibi for a wounded ankle.
Any desire on my part to pursue the matter was cut off by my customer, who handed me her completed form.
“Daydreaming?” she asked me.
“Always,” I said with a customer-friendly smile.
* * *
With no one in the lobby just before closing, I sat at my desk for end-of-day paperwork. As he sometimes did, Ben stopped by at this hour to take down the flag and ask, “Anything exciting today?” or a variation of that.
Today, I’d had more excitement than I needed, though not necessarily the kind I wanted to share with Ben. There was the Do your job or go home note, for one thing. I debated showing it to him. He might overreact and coax me to take it to the level of reporting it to the postal inspector, or underreact and leave me feeling foolish for giving it a second thought.
One thing I knew for sure—I wouldn’t share Cliff’s plans for me with Ben. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt our relationship.
“I see Cliff’s been coming around a lot,” Ben said.
I nearly laughed in his face. Ben gave me a questioning look and I recovered in time to say, “Uh-huh. It’s a tough time for him.”
Ben lifted his long, thin frame onto the counter (where children were forbidden to sit during his reign as postmaster). “I’d say so. The husband is always the number-one suspect, you know.”
Another near laugh. “Not in this case. He was more than seventy miles away in Springfield.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“What does that mean?”
“He could have slipped away, driven like crazy, done the deed, and then gone back without anyone knowing.”
“In a raging storm?” I asked, eyebrows raised.
Ben shrugged. “Or he could have hired someone here to do it.”
I screwed up my nose against the unpleasant idea Ben was airing. “I see. He paid someone to wander around North Ashcot for a day or so, in case there was a storm that might tear a limb from a tree in his backyard, at exactly the time that Daisy would be outside?”
It was clear that Ben needed a life, and I feared my tone suggested as much.
“Anyway, you wouldn’t be letting Cliff drag you into some edgy detective work, or anything like that, would you?”
From his perch (deliberate?) on the counter, Ben looked down at me. I could have sworn he could see through my desk to the folder marked CASSIE, with Cliff’s notes for just that task.
“Why ever would you think that?” I asked.
Ben’s turn to stifle a laugh. “I might be old,” he said, and left me to finish the thought myself.
“I know you’re not dumb, Ben.”
“So that’s a yes?” he asked.
“Yes what?”
“That’s what I thought.” He slid off the counter, his mouth twisted to the side, half grin, half frown. He draped his lanky body over the chair next to my desk, his face turning serious. “You know, they closed the post office over in Brookside.”
“The small town down near Hinsdale. Yes, I heard.”
“It’s a pet-grooming place now.”
I grimaced. “It’s sad to lose facilities like ours,” I said.
“The flagpole is still outside,” he said. “Wonder if they’re just going to keep it.”
“There’s no law against it, I guess.”
His eyes took on a faraway look. “Brookside wasn’t that much smaller than North Ashcot, you know. We could be next.” Ben’s tone was somber, as if he’d already received a memo with the bad news.
Post office closings were a fact of life these days. I often thought of the possibility of losing ours. What would I do? Go back to Boston? Just as I was getting settled and satisfied being back where I was born? And what about Quinn? I couldn’t allow my mind to go there, though I knew I should be more practical and concerned about other uses for my skills in t
he future.
Meanwhile, I could convince myself that the North Ashcot Post Office was indispensable, a bustling place. I looked around at the piles of boxes and bags of mail ready to go out on Monday, and thought how we were thriving. People came from surrounding towns because we had a good track record and lots of parking, which mattered to a lot of busy people.
I thought it admirable of Ben that he still cared about the future of the office. He’d earned his pension, after all, and didn’t have to bother anymore. I drew in my breath as a frightening thought entered my mind. Ben was still connected to administrators across the state. He chatted with higher-ups all the time. An unfailing old-boys network. What if . . . ?
“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked him.
“Not yet. But I know we have to be on our best behavior.”
I folded my hands around the placket at the top button of my shirt. “Clean uniform every day,” I said.
“It’s a lot more than that.”
“Meaning?”
He shrugged. “You figure it out.”
I didn’t like the sound of Ben’s comment. Was he warning me off, afraid I’d get hurt, or worried that nosing around a police investigation would earn bad marks for the North Ashcot Post Office? Or both? Was he uneasy about me or his legacy in the town? I studied his face and saw concern about both.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Ben,” I said, with nothing to back up my confidence.
He drew a loud, deep breath. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.
I retrieved my things, including my dinner from the fridge, hoping Ben wouldn’t ask details about anything I was carrying.
7
I drove home with a fully occupied passenger seat—the take-out container with my aromatic shrimp dinner in a cooler, resting on the thick file of notes and to-do lists. Both legacies of my foodless lunch with Cliff Harmon.
The evening was clear, the roads nearly free of debris, but as I approached Daisy’s Fabrics, I wondered if I’d ever again drive by without slowing down and remembering what had happened during a summer storm. I noticed that the yellow-and-black caution tape had been removed.
I had a strong urge to pull over. A short walk down the narrow alley between Daisy’s shop and Liv’s card shop would take me to the backyard. The scene of the crime. And there was plenty of parking at the curb.
Ben’s thinly veiled warning to behave myself and do nothing that would bring negative attention to the post office rattled around my head. But Ben was an old man, I told myself. Old people were overly cautious. I knew he also cared about me, though he couldn’t completely abandon his reputation of surliness to show it. But he loved his town, too, I reasoned, and would want me to take an interest in all that was going on, to be active in a way that he might not be able to.
By the time I made my decision, I’d arrived in front of the police department. Bad place to park, considering what I was about to do. I made a right turn down the next street and came around again on Main Street, parking before Mahican’s, on the same side of the street as Daisy’s. And the police station. But far enough away, I thought. I tapped my steering wheel. I still had a choice. Turn the key in the ignition and continue on home. Yes or no?
A minute later, I exited my car and walked toward Daisy’s Fabrics. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Sunni. How likely was it that she’d choose this moment to take a stroll outside her building? Not very, I hoped. I made it to the alley between the shops and traipsed along the gravel path to the back lot where Daisy had died. I imagined her fighting until the end and choked back tears.
The area was half landscaped, with a lawn and a row of flowers toward the front, tapering off to more gravel and rocks for the few feet before the back fence. The enormous branch that had fallen from the maple hadn’t been moved; its brown leaves extended into the untended section.
Although the sky was overcast, it was well before sunset and I saw shadows everywhere. There was nothing sluggish about my imagination. I stepped toward the branch, not sure what I expected to see. Blood? Signs of a struggle? An indentation where Daisy’s body had lain? My eyes burned from my efforts to hold back tears. I imagined the police combing through the gravel for evidence, checking every rock of significant size.
I saw nothing unusual and questioned why I was here at all. To investigate as if I were a cop? To lose points from Sunni? To indulge a morbid curiosity? To win points from Cliff for brilliant scouting work and perhaps get a coupon for a free evening with a bodyguard? Or simply to mourn my friend. Whatever the reason, the fact was that I was standing where a killer had stood only a few days ago, and if I were smart, I’d beat it out of here.
As I started back down the narrow alley toward the street, I heard a loud, prolonged clatter, as if a cabinet had fallen over and emptied its contents. The noise was coming from inside the shop. I stopped short and leaned against the white clapboard building where Daisy’s Fabrics was housed. More noise, this time of the thumping variety. I held my breath. What if Daisy’s killer had returned to the scene of the crime? Didn’t they always do that? Was that my real goal today—to meet the killer?
What was wrong with me?
Above my head was a window that I hoped was closed. The last thing I wanted was curious eyes peeking down and outing me. I hadn’t thought to try the back door that led down a few steps to the spot where I’d been standing; I hadn’t thought of entering the shop at all. Unlike the intruder. Was the intruder now planning to exit that way, or through the front door? Could it be Cliff roaming around inside? Maybe it was a crime scene tech back for further scrutiny? Or Jules, or a cleaning crew, or any number of people with a perfect right to be in the closed shop? Including the chief of police.
I determined with less than one hundred percent certainty that the series of noises—a clatter, a thump, followed by a scrape, then shuffling—was moving toward Main Street. I inched my way along, following the footsteps that were only a few inches above my head, on the first floor of the building.
A little farther down the alley, the noise stopped and so did I. I calculated that I was now next to the side wall of the store where the large cutting table sat.
Traffic whizzed by, if that can describe the way cars move in a small town on its main street at what passes for rush hour. Nothing like the many areas of Boston and vicinity where sometimes a dozen lanes were forced to merge into two to enter a tunnel or cross a bridge. It helped to remember that aspect of Boston when I became nostalgic about my life in the big city.
Since I arrived in the alley, there had been no foot traffic along Main Street. A good thing, since I had no idea how a pedestrian might have responded to a uniformed postal worker skulking in the shadows between downtown shops after hours.
The next sounds I heard could have been those of opening and closing the front door of the shop. I took a chance and moved farther along the side of the shop toward Main. I inhaled deeply before I ventured a look around the corner.
A figure was already walking away from the front door, away from the alley where I stood. He must have been inside for a while, I reasoned, since he hadn’t passed me on Main. A male, maybe, average size, though it was hard to tell. He wore a dark jacket, too bulky for a summer eve. His hood was over his head, his hands in his pockets. I’d already decided after hours of watching television crime dramas that, of all the trends in casual wear, the hood was the criminal’s best friend. A large envelope or package was tucked under his arm. He moved swiftly to the traffic light just after Mike’s Bike Shop. My wish came true and he had to stop again for a DON’T WALK sign at the corner. Did I dare come out of hiding and walk toward him?
Why not?
I headed out, put my own hands in the pockets of my sweater, wishing it had a hood, and tried to focus on what he was holding close to his body, something he might have taken from the shop. It looked like a Priority Mail envelope. Or was t
hat my job talking?
The stiff-looking package was close enough to nine and a half by twelve and a half, the size of a Flat Rate envelope, in my view. The red, white, and blue trims on the envelope weren’t showing, nor could I see the red stripes across the front and back of the top, long end. It seemed thin enough to be one of the complimentary items from the shipping supplies section of any post office. Mine? I felt an unwelcome shiver.
The traffic light turned green and I had a new decision to make. Push forward or retreat? There was only half a block before the police department building. If my stalkee discovered me, surely I wouldn’t be in danger practically in earshot of law enforcement.
That scenario was comforting in theory, but when he turned before crossing the street, and I thought he spotted me, my cowardice came to the fore. I indulged in a bit of sleight of hand. I pulled a package of tissues from my pocket and dropped it on the ground. I bent over to pick it up, made a show (for anyone who might be watching) of dropping it in the trash can at the curb, then made an unobtrusive U-turn and headed back to my car. This time I was aware of a faint scent in the air, as if the (other) intruder had left a trail. The scent was sweet enough for me to consider that I’d been tailing a female, but I couldn’t be sure one way or the other.
Strong feelings of inadequacy bugged me as I approached the front door of Daisy’s Fabrics again, this time from the other direction. I needed to be braver, to take more risks. What were the chances that the door might be open? Good, I decided. It was unlikely that the intruder who preceded me had stopped to lock the door. I made another surreptitious, choreographed move, climbing the two steps from the sidewalk, and turned the doorknob. The door gave way and I found myself inside the shop, dark and slightly musty smelling. And empty, I hoped.
I looked around, distracted by the neat bolts of fabric, grouped in some displays by theme (Fourth of July patterns were on sale, I noted; Halloween designs half in, half out of shipping boxes); and in other setups by the kind of material (wools, silks, cottons lined up together), or color (who knew there were that many shades of green?).
