Murder at Barclay Meadow

by Wendy Sand Eckel

  Oh, my, I thought, as my pumps clicked on the linoleum. Woozy, I grabbed the railing and descended the stairs. Dr. Angeles, I thought, your study was a waste of time. I could tell you right now humans are like animals—triggered by scents and attractive features. And I was a defenseless peahen who had just been done in by one hell of a set of plumage. I stopped halfway down the last flight of steps. I gripped the railing tighter. Good Lord. Is this how he seduced Megan?

  SEVEN

  Tyler Wells waited on my front stoop, hands in the back pockets of his jeans. He stood motionless as he watched me park my convertible and kill the engine. Dickens sat next to him focusing just as intently, his ears perked forward.

  I picked up my bags, climbed ungracefully out of the car, and walked over to him. Two bottles of chardonnay clanked incessantly like tattling siblings. I looked up. His forehead was creased, his mouth pursed. He stared at me as if I’d grown a second head.

  “What?” My voice was hoarse.

  He took off a faded Baltimore Ravens cap and held it in both hands. His straw-colored hair tumbled onto his forehead. “It’s not me I’m wondering about.”

  “Who then?”

  His eyebrows rose a little higher and he cocked his head. “It probably isn’t my place to say, but you look a little wild-eyed, is all.”

  I smoothed my hair. “Wild-eyed?”

  “Just saying.”

  I walked up to the door. The bottles clanked again. I turned to face him. “If you must know, an Alanis Morissette song came on the radio while I was driving. It’s one of her older songs and I was”—I avoided his eyes—“singing along.”

  He remained silent.

  I looked up at him. “Did you need something, Tyler?”

  “Coffee.”

  “You mean you liked my coffee?”

  “I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.”

  “Of course I have coffee. I always have coffee.” I opened the door and caught the scent of engine oil as he passed. A dirty rag hung from the back pocket of his jeans.

  I set my bag on the counter and the bottles clanked yet again. “It’s too quiet on the Eastern Shore. Does it ever get to you?” I looked over at him. A white stripe ran across the top of his otherwise tanned face. “No, I guess it wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe some people like noise because it drowns out what’s in their head,” Tyler said.

  “I never thought of it that way.” I frowned. “Did you read that somewhere?”

  “Nope.”

  A farmer and a philosopher, I thought as I filled a mug with steaming-hot coffee. I waited while he scrubbed his hands at the sink. “I’m so glad you like my coffee. I always have some ready. I keep it in this carafe to keep it fresh.” I set the cup next to him and handed him a towel. “Today’s brew is a dark-roast Moroccan—guaranteed to give you a swift kick in the shorts.” I took a small step back. “I’m sorry. I’ve already had several cups. And I’m afraid after the third I tend to get a little loquacious.”

  He picked up his mug and carried it over to the row of canisters. I watched as he stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee. It was only our second shared coffee and I was already learning his routines. “Do you want something to eat? I’m not sure what I have, but…” I started over to the refrigerator.

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I said. “So, how’s it going out there?”

  “It’s a lot like work.”

  “At least the weather is good—lots of sun, not too cold.”

  “We could use some rain.”

  I leaned against the counter. I was working too hard. I crossed my arms. The pendulum of my aunt’s grandfather clock ticked back and forth. Several cubes clunked out of the ice maker in the freezer. I waited, hoping he would say something. Tyler exuded strength and control. The absolute certitude in his every movement and minced word unnerved me. I was the complete antithesis of him in my current emotional state.

  He finished his coffee, set the mug in the sink, and still said nothing.

  “You know, Tyler, I prepare Mr. Miele every night before I go to bed. All you have to do is push the start button in the morning when you get here. You could help yourself.”

  He looked up at me. “Mr. who?”

  “Oh, my goodness.” Heat spread up my neck igniting my skin. “I didn’t just say that.”

  A small, tight smile appeared on his face.

  “My coffee bistro—it’s a Miele and, oh my.” I placed my hands over my cheeks.

  His smile broadened. I had never seen him smile. Animation brightened his face and I was struck with the realization that he was actually very nice looking.

  “So…” he said. “Where exactly is his start button?”

  My mouth fell open. “It’s…” I hesitated, trying to ignore his use of a personal pronoun. “It would be this one.” I squared my shoulders and looked him in the eye. “The button that says S-T-A-R-T.”

  “You sure you don’t mind me coming in your house?”

  “Honestly, Tyler, this farm seems more yours than mine. I feel like the intruder, so yes, please, help yourself to anything.”

  He regarded me for a moment. “I should get back to work.” He picked up his cap and headed for the door.

  “The Ravens are having a good season so far. I watched the game last weekend.”

  He paused. “They’re my team, no doubt.” He reached for the door handle. “They’re just a little too unpredictable for my liking.”

  I started to respond, but the latch clicked. Fading daylight washed the room in a dull gray. The kitchen felt cold and cavernous again. Tyler must be right about my need for noise because all the loneliness I fought to keep at bay rolled over me in the silence following his exit. I put his mug in the dishwasher, the chardonnay in the refrigerator—no, wait, the freezer, it would chill faster—and retreated to my computer, hoping Annie would be on Facebook and help fill the void that was now my life.

  Rhonda Pendleton has posted on your wall.

  Rhonda Pendleton

  Hi, Rosie. Have you learned anything more? Let’s have lunch. Meet ya halfway. xoxo

  I replied an enthusiastic “yes!!!!” to the lunch invitation, then checked out the available chats. No Annie. She must be at dinner. I considered opening the wine, but decided it wouldn’t be cold enough. I looked at Rhonda’s profile picture. It was the same photo as the one on her business card—a much younger Rhonda with lots of air brushing and good lighting. Underneath was a quote: “No bird soars too high if she soars with her own wings.—William Blake.” That didn’t really sound like the Rhonda I had met at the funeral. Maybe Facebook profiles don’t reveal as much about a person as I thought. Maybe it only exhibits how one wants to be perceived—controlled public relations—always in makeup, at an ideal weight, loved by so many “friends.”

  Feeling voyeuristic, I decided to snoop around her timeline. She had been tagged in a photo album labeled “Cougars’ Night Out.” The first picture was of a cake crowded with candles in the foreground, Rhonda and a group of arm-in-arm women in the back. The pictures that followed were quite different. I gasped when I saw the side view of a nearly naked man with bulging muscles straddling Rhonda. Her eyes were glossed in an alcohol haze, and she was stuffing a wad of money in what I hoped was the man’s G-string. The caption read “Lap dance.” So there it was: the completed Rhonda. Perhaps Facebook does, in the end, expose all.

  EIGHT

  Sue walked briskly into the room on the night of our third memoir class, settled into her desk, and checked her watch. She glanced over her shoulder. “I don’t know why I rush to get here.”

  “You might want to switch to Jillian time,” I said. “Save yourself the stress.”

  Sue smiled and reached into a red leather Michael Kors tote. She pulled out a fresh stack of papers and tapped them together on her desk.

  The twilight sky glowed navy blue through the large paned windows. Tony arrived and flipped on a few more of the fluorescent lights. H
is BlackBerry clanged like a fire alarm as he settled into the seat in front of me. He glanced at the screen and let it fall back into his pocket. He turned to face me. “You write anything yet?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “You’ve got to chop up the writer’s block. Just sit down and start writing. Here’s your first sentence: I was born.”

  “Mm,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

  Tony’s phone bleeped. He reached for it and started typing with his thumbs.

  Glenn strolled in looking freshly pressed and confident. He sat in his usual seat next to mine and set his briefcase on the floor. “Tell me everything about your meeting with Dr. Angeles, Rosalie. I’ve been anxious to talk with you.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m so glad to finally see you.”

  “What was your impression of him?”

  “For starters, he is very attractive.”

  “And?” Glenn said.

  “And he’s a terrible flirt.”

  “Did he make a pass at you?” Glenn said, sounding protective.

  Tony stopped typing and drummed his fingers on the desk.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember the last time someone made a pass at me.” I lowered my voice. “He asked me to have a drink with him. That’s inappropriate, right?”

  “I would say so.” Glenn rested his arm on the back of his chair. “But that’s good information. We suspected he comes on to his students and you’ve confirmed that he does.”

  “I know. I thought the same thing. That could be how he behaved with Megan. The man has the personal boundaries of a golden retriever.”

  Glenn chuckled.

  “And listen to this,” I said. “You know his prestigious grant?” I leaned in closer. “He’s studying sex.”

  Tony spun around. “Who’s studying sex?”

  Glenn and I exchanged a furtive glance.

  “Just someone,” I said.

  “Come on,” Tony said. “Who are you two talking about?”

  “If you must know, Rosalie found a dead body,” Glenn said.

  “No kidding?” Tony said. “Where?”

  “Megan was in my marsh grasses.” I glanced at Glenn. “I really don’t think we should—”

  “We’re looking into how she died,” Glenn said. “There is a professor at the college who is a suspect.”

  Sue placed her pen on the desk in a slow, deliberate movement. Her head was statue still.

  “Maybe I could help,” Tony said. “I’ve been living on my sailboat while my ex-wife is cozied up in our very expensive house in Wilmington. When I’m not working, I’m bored out of my gourd. Other than you guys, I know a total of three people. Count ’em.” He held up his hand and popped up his index finger. “The pizza delivery boy…” Another finger. “The liquor store owner, and three, the gal who takes my checks at the marina.” Tony looked over at Sue. “Well, Susie Q? I know you’re listening. You in?”

  Sue turned to face us and tucked her shiny black hair behind an ear. “Do you have any other suspects?”

  “Yeah,” Tony said. “What do you know so far? And I want to hear more about this research. Sounds like he’s going to study you.”

  “Everyone slow down,” I said. “This is just something I’m doing and Glenn offered to help. I don’t even know if she was murdered. It’s just a hunch.”

  “The police closed the investigation,” Glenn said. “Megan’s father asked them to.”

  “Why would he do that?” Sue said.

  “We’re trying to find out,” Glenn said. “But it certainly is suspicious.”

  “I agree.” Sue leaned forward. “I think we should learn as much about this girl as possible. I can get us onto her Facebook page.” Her cheeks had flushed a rosy pink. “Did you know that after the Virginia Tech shootings, people posted messages on the dead students’ Facebook pages? It was a way to mourn. I would bet people are still posting on her wall. They do that now—keep people’s Facebook pages up after they’re deceased.”

  “Sue,” I said. “Back up. Are you saying you can look at her entire page without being her friend? I thought that was private.”

  “It is.” Sue shrugged. “But I have my ways. I can hack onto her page and figure out how to log on as Megan. If we need to, that is. And we might at some point. I really think the more we know about her, the better chance we have of discovering who killed her.”

  “If someone killed her,” I interjected.

  “Hang on,” Tony said. “Sue, how the heck can you get on her Facebook page?”

  Sue’s hair slipped from behind her ear. She gathered it up and dropped it behind her back. “I can’t really say.”

  “What’s important is that you can do it,” Glenn said. “There should be a wealth of information. For all we know the killer could have written on her wall.”

  Their eagerness was dizzying. I felt like Dorothy when her three new friends signed up to find the wizard. And like Dorothy, I needed to let them know there was a witch on my tail. “Slow down, everyone. I haven’t told you about the sheriff.”

  “What about the sheriff?” Glenn said.

  “He’s scary,” I said. “And he doesn’t like me. In fact, I’m certain he despises me.”

  “He agreed to close the case very quickly,” Glenn said. “Possibly prematurely. Perhaps he is a suspect, too.”

  Jillian strolled in, sat at her desk, and fished her cell phone out of her hobo bag.

  “Sue,” Glenn said. “I think you made a good point. We need to know our victim inside and out. Maybe we could divvy it up—each follow a different lead.”

  I looked from face to face. Maybe I wasn’t as alone as I thought. Not only did they think I was right to look into Megan’s death, they were going to help me. “So we’re a team,” I said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Hey,” Jillian said into her phone. “’Sup?”

  Sue glanced over her shoulder. “I don’t think anyone should know what we’re doing.”

  “We don’t need to worry about Jillian,” I said. “She barely listens to your memoirs.”

  “Sue’s right again,” Glenn said. “This is a very small community. We’ll need a private place to meet.”

  “Is there such a thing in Cardigan?” Tony said. “I mean, heck, I went to the Acme the other day and the clerk asked if I was that guy from Wilmington living on his sailboat.”

  “We can form our own private group on Facebook,” Sue said. “No one will be able to read our posts but us.”

  “That’s it.” Glenn slapped his palm on the desk. “My grandchildren keep asking me to get a Facebook account. This will be the push I need. All right, so if we form our own group, no one else can see our conversations?”

  “That’s correct,” Sue said. “I’ll set it up tonight and send you an invitation.” She leaned back in her chair and looked down at her lap. “There’s just one thing.”

  “What?” I watched her carefully.

  “I won’t be logged on as Sue Ling.” She looked up at us, her eyes darting from face to face. “I’ll friend you as Shelby Smith.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” I said. “Don’t you have to be an authentic person?”

  “There are a lot of things about Facebook people don’t know,” Sue said. “It’s called catfishing. Anyway, if we have a private group we have to pick a name for it.”

  “Hm…” Glenn rubbed his chin. “To solve a problem you have to explore all possibilities. And as Rosalie said, we don’t know for certain Megan was murdered. So we start with a question as you do in any valid research. All right, so what’s our question?”

  I thought for a moment. “What if Megan Johnston was murdered?”

  “That’s it,” Glenn said. “Our Facebook group will be called the ‘What Ifs.’” He lifted his notepad and a pen from his pocket. “Now, will someone please tell me how to get on Facebook?”

  NINE

  My stomach grumbled with hunger as I drove down the lane to my house
. Afternoon sunlight peeked in and out of the rows of gnarled cypress trees. My papers and a pack of cinnamon gum were on the passenger seat. I gazed up at the house as it came into view. Built before the Civil War, Barclay Meadow was graced with two-story pillars and floor-to-ceiling, cross-paned windows. The lane ended in a loop that encircled a clump of mature, musky-scented boxwoods my aunt had tended as if they were her grandchildren.

  Charlotte Barclay Gardner, who was ten years older than my mother, inherited Barclay Meadow from a long line of Barclays. As a child, I spent weeks here in the summer. I filled my days running through the fields, reading for hours on the dock, harvesting tomatoes from the garden, and kneading bread dough. She loved this house. It was the child she never had, the husband who died too soon. She ate the food it produced and nurtured the people who worked the fields.

  Raised in Baltimore, Charlotte was the first of the Barclay clan in fifty years to make it a permanent home. But despite her kindness, her generosity to local charities and involvement in the community, she was always considered to be from “away.” That was something else I inherited from her.

  Tyler’s tractor hummed in the distance. Dust billowed behind the large tires, seagulls dipping and rising in its wake. He had been working twelve-hour days. I envied his productive, structured life. The What Ifs were scheduled to chat for the first time later that night and I was excited to be moving forward with the investigation. I had my list of suspects all ready to go. Finding Megan had been traumatic. I will never erase the sight of her body from my mind. But now I felt a bond—a duty to find out how she died. In a way, my life ended, too. At least the life I had always known.

  My skirt felt loose as I pushed open the front door. I’d gotten on the scale that morning only to find I’d lost five pounds. Of course Ed would have noticed that before me. He watched my waistline like a German pointer. Five pounds. Is that what he wanted? Five pounds less of me? Would that have made him happy?

  I hadn’t cooked a meal since I moved in. And yet, I loved to cook. It wasn’t unusual for me to go to the market several times a week to secure fresh produce and ingredients for a new recipe. And on the rare times Ed, Annie, and I were all together for dinner, I would top the table with a cloth and a pair of tapers and cook a three-course meal. The candlelight encouraged conversation and lingering. Those were the happiest times for me—when Ed was engaged with Annie and we discussed everything from politics to rap music to the latest Nationals trade.