Crime & Punctuation

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  While I worked, I came to the conclusion that it hadn’t been a need for closure. It hadn’t eased my sense of loss one iota to “celebrate” James’s life after his death. He’d always maintained that funerals were a waste of time and money. After the fact, I had to agree with him.

  No, the truth was simpler than that. I’d agreed to go to Tiffany’s funeral out of crass curiosity. I was hoping to get a look at her entrepreneur husband, perhaps even have the opportunity to ask him if the police had told him about Tiffany’s novel. Imagining the manuscript in some police evidence room, forgotten and gathering dust, bothered the heck out of me.

  She had told me that her husband didn’t know she was writing a book, but it seemed to me that he might want to have possession of it now—a legacy of sorts. If James had written a novel in secret, I’d certainly jump at the chance to read it! Besides, since I was no longer in a position to edit Tiffany’s book, I felt obliged to refund the money she had paid me as an advance.

  So it was that on Monday, at the First Presbyterian Church of Lenape Hollow, I trailed after Darlene as she steered her scooter expertly up the ramp and into the sanctuary. The side aisle was wide enough to allow her to pass without difficulty, but to avoid blocking anyone else’s way, she headed straight for the pews closest to the altar. When I had settled into the third row with Darlene parked beside me, I had a clear view of the family of the deceased.

  Gregory Onslow, Tiffany’s husband, was a good ten years older than his late wife. Either that, or he had deliberately added white streaks to his hair in an attempt at gravitas. He wore a dark gray pinstriped suit that screamed “custom made” and kept his eyes straight ahead so I couldn’t get a good look at his face.

  In the same pew, but with a marked distance between them, sat Tiffany’s grandmother, Veronica North. At our reunion banquet I’d only seen her from a distance and in dim illumination. Sunlight filtering in through the stained glass windows struck hair of an improbable matte black, a far cry from her natural color. This was so obviously a dye job that it was painful to look at, and when she turned slightly, to the accompaniment of a whisper of silk, she revealed tightly stretched skin that shouted, “Facelift!”

  “Where are Tiffany’s parents?” I whispered to Darlene, recalling that she’d told me Tiffany’s father was Ronnie’s son.

  “They moved to New Zealand.”

  I started to ask why, but just then the minister appeared to launch into a surprisingly brief service. He did not ask anyone to share their memories of Tiffany, and he kept prayers to a minimum.

  When it was over and I stood to look toward the exit, I was surprised to discover that the church was packed. I repressed a sigh. Between Darlene’s need for maneuvering space and the fact that we were seated so far down front, it was going to take a while to escape. Everyone parted for the minister, the widower, and the grieving grandmother, but the ranks closed in again as soon as they passed.

  A steady murmur of hushed voices hummed in the air, broken here and there by a stifled laugh or a cough. The pungent smell of the flowers—that odd mix that comes from too many fancy arrangements—had me longing for fresh air. I tried to distract myself by searching among the mourners for familiar faces.

  There was no sign of Detective Hazlett. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Cop shows on television always give the impression that homicide detectives make a practice of attending the victim’s funeral, hoping the killer will show up and somehow give himself away. Another myth shattered.

  Or, just maybe, there was no homicide involved. From what little I could overhear of the quiet conversations around me, no one was speculating about murder.

  “I hear she died at home,” one woman whispered to her companion.

  “A fall?”

  “Slipped in the shower or some such. Terrible way to go.”

  A shower, I thought, would only account for that soaked business card if Tiffany went into it fully clothed.

  “Found in the woods behind her grandmother’s house,” someone on the other side of me said. “Slipped on a rock and cracked her fool head open.”

  I turned and tried to pick out the speaker, but there were too many people around.

  In the crush, I did spot several classmates, together with one or two others who looked vaguely familiar, but I felt no particular urge to push my way through the crowd to talk to any of them. I jumped when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Michelle? Michelle Greenleigh?”

  “Yes. Well, Michelle Lincoln now.” I turned to find a tall, slender woman standing behind me. She appeared to be a few years my senior.

  “You won’t remember me,” she said, “but I started teaching at the high school your junior year. I was Clarice Browne then. Now my last name is Cameron.” She gestured toward the exit, where the minister was shaking hands with parishioners on their way out. “That’s my husband. He’s been the pastor here for the last four decades.”

  “That has to be some kind of record,” I blurted. I could remember three different pastors during my first eighteen years.

  “He is much revered.” She sounded a trifle defensive.

  “I’m sure he is.” We’d moved out into the aisle, but there were still too many people ahead of us for Darlene’s scooter to get through.

  “I had heard you moved back to Lenape Hollow,” Clarice said. “I’m surprised I haven’t seen you in church on Sunday. I don’t believe you ever gave up your membership in this congregation.”

  “In that case, I must owe a fortune in back offerings.”

  That quip went over, as we used to say, like a lead balloon.

  “Your spiritual well-being is nothing to joke about.” The evangelical gleam in her eyes had me backing up a step. “What church did you attend during your time away?”

  I was tempted to tell her I’d become a Buddhist or a Scientologist just to discourage her recruitment effort, but the truth was that I’d simply stopped attending worship services of any sort a long time ago. Her aggressive attempt to lure me back into the fold only made me dig in my heels, more determined than ever to avoid organized religion. My faith was a private matter, one I had no intention of discussing.

  “Fore!” Darlene called out as she spotted an opening and shot toward it on her scooter.

  I jumped to one side, narrowly avoiding damage to my toes. Clarice backpedaled rapidly, going in the opposite direction. Before the minister’s wife could buttonhole me a second time, I hurried after my friend.

  In Darlene’s van, we followed the hearse to the cemetery for a brief graveside prayer. Afterward, I felt obliged to join the queue offering condolences to Ronnie North.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told her when my turn came. “I only met your granddaughter once, but she seemed like a lovely person.”

  Ronnie looked down her nose at me. She has a fine patrician proboscis and does this well. In high school, that look and the superior smirk that went with it always made me feel like a bug about to be squashed.

  “How kind of you to say so,” she murmured in a pleasant contralto that was huskier than I remembered but sounded just as insincere. When she turned her attention to the next person waiting to offer condolences, I got a whiff of her signature perfume. I’ve never cared for Emeraude. I suspect Ronnie is the reason.

  Dismissed, I looked around for Gregory Onslow. My gaze fell on a sandy-haired fellow in a gray suit that looked expensive but not custom made. In his late twenties, he stood a little apart from the rest of the mourners. A cell phone was pressed to his ear. I shook my head over his rudeness. He clearly had no clue how to behave at at funeral.

  Onslow, like Ronnie, was surrounded by people offering sympathy. I’d have to wait before I could speak with him.

  It didn’t bother me to linger in a cemetery, especially this one. When I was a little girl, my grandfather used to bring me here and tell me stories about our ancestors. Greenleighs and twigs from several other branches of the family tree had been buried
in Lenape Hollow Cemetery for generations. The first was John Greenleigh, one of the duly elected fence viewers for the village.

  As a youngster, I thought a fence viewer must be a surveyor. It turned out I was almost right. The job involved making sure people’s fences were in compliance with the local laws and also dealing with complaints about livestock that crossed a fence or stone wall onto the neighbor’s property. This was a big deal in colonial New England and New York; I don’t know about the rest of the country. Anyway, John Greenleigh went to his reward back in 1810 and I wandered over to his weather-worn headstone to pay my respects.

  The graves were well cared for, thanks to an endowment to the cemetery association that paid for mowing the grass and making minor repairs. If there had been a problem with vandalism, as there was in some cemeteries, it was not evident here.

  I’m not certain how long I spent ruminating on family history, but when I glanced toward Darlene’s van I saw that she’d already stowed her scooter in the back and was in the driver’s seat. Even from a distance, I could tell she was fidgeting. I signaled that I’d only be another minute or two and looked around for Tiffany’s husband.

  Only a few mourners remained. Ronnie had left. Onslow, however, was still present, talking to a man I didn’t recognize. With a determined stride, I headed their way, only to be brought up short when I heard the venom in Onslow’s raised voice.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” he demanded, looming over the smaller man in a threatening manner.

  “I am well aware of your reputation, and I am not impressed. Just because you have money—a good deal more of it now than you did before your wife’s death—doesn’t mean you can have everything your own way.”

  As I watched, a dull red wave crept up the back of Onslow’s neck. His hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. “Try to stop me, and you’ll regret it.”

  I turned tail and fled. Obviously, this was not an opportune moment to talk to the widower about his late wife’s hopes and dreams. I wondered if there ever would be a good time to do so. Who knew how he’d react? Having witnessed the intensity of his anger, I couldn’t help but speculate that Onslow’s short fuse might have been the reason Tiffany had never told him about her writing.

  Chapter 6

  Although I had not been invited to Ronnie’s house after the funeral, Darlene had. She insisted that I accompany her. I thought about making my excuses and walking home. It wasn’t far. Lenape Hollow isn’t all that big. Instead, I climbed into the passenger seat of the van and kept my mouth shut.

  Only after we were under way did it occur to me that I had no idea where Ronnie lived. In high school, her family had owned a one-story, cookie-cutter house in the village’s sole housing development. Since Tiffany had said something about her grandmother’s place being full of antiques, I could only suppose quite a few things about Ronnie’s life had changed in the course of half a century.

  A few minutes later, Darlene left a quiet street on the west side of the village and pulled through open wrought-iron gates to climb a long, winding driveway toward a Victorian mansion. I remembered the property as belonging to a miserly old woman named Laverne Levine. On Halloween, kids used to dare each other to climb over the wall—the gates were always closed and locked—and knock on her door. The bravest of the boys tossed firecrackers onto her porch before they took off running.

  I was still smiling at that memory when we entered what was now Veronica North’s house, and I caught sight of Mike Doran. Speak of the devil. I sidled up to him. “Any firecrackers in your pockets, Mike?”

  His blue eyes twinkled, but he managed to keep a straight face. “Why, Mikki Greenleigh, as I live and breathe. I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”

  “You being a respectable senior citizen and all?”

  “Exactly.”

  We hadn’t talked much at our reunion banquet, but I knew my old classmate had gone to law school and set up his practice in Lenape Hollow. “How are you keeping busy, now that you’re retired?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “By not entirely retiring. I keep my hand in with the occasional interesting case.”

  “Michael!” Ronnie’s imperious tone put an abrupt end to our conversation. She beckoned, and he trotted over like a good dog, abandoning me without a backward glance.

  It had been that way in high school, too. He’d asked me out a couple of times and then dumped me to date her. I’d been philosophical about the breakup even then, joking that we wouldn’t have lasted as a couple anyway. Simply being known as “Mikey and Mikki” would have killed the romance.

  I helped myself to a cup of oversweetened punch and a cookie and looked around. I recognized quite a few faces from the church and the cemetery, including the sandy-haired man with the phone glued to his ear. He was still yakking on it.

  “Who is that guy?” I asked Darlene.

  In deference to the crowded conditions in Ronnie’s house, Darlene had left her scooter in the van and was making do with her walker. “Dip me up a cup of that punch and I’ll tell you.”

  After I obliged her, she took a sip, made a face, then downed a longer swallow before she answered my question. “That’s Alan Van Heusen. He’s Greg Onslow’s flunky. Onslow sends Van Heusen in when he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty.”

  “Sends him to do what? Break kneecaps?”

  “What a lively imagination you have!”

  Van Heusen was tall and muscular. When he turned slightly, I saw that he had big brown eyes and a face that was quite pleasant looking. No scars. No sign that his nose had ever been broken. Nothing, in fact, to mark him as anything but a legitimate businessman.

  That didn’t change my opinion of his manners. His boss’s wife had just died, and he was in the home of her bereaved grandmother. Out of respect he should, at the least, go outside to conduct business. Better still, that phone call could have waited until he was back at his office.

  “I suppose, now that I think about it,” Darlene mused, her voice wry, “that Onslow did make a few offers folks couldn’t refuse.”

  My eyebrows shot up.

  “More than a year ago, Mongaup Valley Ventures bought up several buildings on Main Street, all the ones currently sporting signs that say they’ll be opening soon. New ownership seemed like a good idea for most of them, the ones that went out of business ages ago, but a couple were doing okay as they were. Now those shops are boarded up, too, and if anyone knows what’s scheduled to replace them, they’re not saying.”

  “Are you telling me that Onslow forced the owners to sell?”

  Darlene frowned into her cup. “I don’t like to spread unfounded rumors, but I know for a fact that in one case there was another prospective buyer in the picture, someone who had definite plans to move right in. Onslow stepped up at the last minute with a preemptive bid.”

  As we talked, I continued to watch the people around us. It didn’t take me long to realize there was something peculiar about their behavior. There was no casual flow of movement. Conversation, too, seemed oddly static. True, it was an occasion for hushed voices, but I sensed an undercurrent I was at a loss to understand. It didn’t feel like sadness or grief. It felt like anger. The tension in the air was thick enough to choke a horse.

  “Darlene, what’s going on here?”

  She followed my gaze to the group gathered around Ronnie. A glance in Onslow’s direction revealed another cluster of people congregating near him. Judging by the glares and the ominous muttering coming from both sides, these folks were ready to rumble. The man I’d seen Onslow try to browbeat at the cemetery was whispering in Ronnie’s ear. She looked as if she’d just bitten into a particularly bitter piece of fruit.

  “Do you remember me mentioning that Onslow’s company has a construction project planned, one that has a lot of people riled up?”

  “So what?” As guests in Ronnie’s house, these folks ought to be able to keep a lid on their feelings. Did no one feel any respect for the dead?

>   “Tiffany’s grandmother is the leader of the opposition.” Darlene nibbled a cookie.

  “I thought you told me Ronnie approved of her granddaughter’s choice of a husband.”

  “She probably did, at first. Financially and socially, Onslow is a good catch. But then he came up with a scheme to build a theme park in Lenape Hollow. With the legal gambling issue finally settled, he thinks he can bring prosperity back to this part of Sullivan County, too—restore the town to the tourist mecca it was when we were teenagers.”

  “With a theme park?” Visions of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Santa’s Village danced in my head, and neither fit well into Lenape Hollow. To say the concept boggled my mind was an understatement.

  Darlene’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “Ever since our little town was passed over as the site for Sullivan County’s new casino, local people have come up with all kinds of crackpot suggestions to improve our economic situation. The difference in Onslow’s case is that he has the money to back up what he wants to do. Mongaup Valley Ventures bought up two hundred and sixty-five acres on Chestnut Mountain, including the old hotel grounds.”

  I had only the vaguest memories of a Victorian-era hotel on the highest point of land in the area. It had burned down when we were kids and had been closed for decades before that.

  “This is on top of the businesses on Main Street?” I asked.

  “All of Onslow’s plans veer toward the grandiose. Remind me to give you that brochure I mentioned the other day. You can read his prospectus for yourself.”

  “Why don’t we head for your place now,” I suggested, “before someone tries to sucker me into taking sides.”

  Darlene said nothing more as she drove from Ronnie’s dooryard to the end of the driveway. When we reached the street beyond, I expected her to turn left. Both her house and mine were in that direction. Instead, she hung a right, went about a hundred yards uphill, and turned right again, stopping in front of a heavy wooden gate not much smaller than the one in Jurassic Park.