Murder in the Museum_Edmund DeCleryk Mysteries

by Karen Shughart

  OKO

  Murder in the Museum

  An Edmund DeCleryk Mystery

  by

  Karen Shughart

  PROLOGUE

  York, Upper Canada, British North America

  1847

  He’d been a healer, here in this land so far from where he’d been born, working alongside his beloved wife, administering potions and poultices to villagers who trusted that he’d make them well, or at least ease the discomfort of dying. How different from his beginnings.

  While his childhood had been one of loss and sorrow, his life as an adult had been blessed with many riches: a loving family, good neighbors, a land full of bounty. He knew, though, that his time in this welcoming place, his adopted place, would soon end, and before he passed he’d pledged to record his story with the hope that someday someone would discover and read his manuscript, his confession, and right the wrong he’d committed so long ago. He’d lived a good and honorable life, here in this Canadian wilderness, but earlier, many years ago….

  He picked up his pen, dipped it in ink and began to write, remembering with clarity the details from his boyhood and the circumstances that had brought him here. He needed to write quickly. Just after dawn, his wife had left him to visit with their daughter, who lived in a nearby village, to help tend to her growing brood of young ones. She would return in time for their evening meal.

  Many hours later he SEALed the pot of ink, wiped his pen, and after the ink had dried, closed the chamois-bound manuscript. Placing it in a metal box, he removed a large, loose stone from the fireplace hearth, set the box into a niche he had carved, and replaced the stone. He heard in the distance the clomping of horses’ hooves and the clacking wheels of a carriage that after a few minutes stopped in front of their simple stone cottage. He peered out the small casement window in their front parlor. His wife had arrived. He heard the door open.

  “My dear,” he beamed as he opened his arms to embrace her. “I trust the grandchildren are well, and that your day was pleasurable.”

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Lighthouse Cove, New York

  This century

  Annie DeCleryk, executive director of the Lighthouse Cove Historical Society and Museum, saved her document in a Word file, backed it up on a flash drive, pushed her chair away from her desk, and stood up and walked to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Filling the tea kettle with water, she placed it on a burner of the old gas stove and turned the burner on. After pulling a large, brown speckled, glazed ceramic mug from a cupboard, she went into the pantry where she took a tin from a shelf, opened it and pulled out a bag of spiced black tea, one of her favorites.

  A few minutes later she was stretched out on the living room sofa reading a mystery, the steaming mug, redolent with cinnamon and cloves, in hand; her ten-year-old beagle, Gretchen, snuggled up against her. It was late afternoon on a gray day in November, and a warming fire crackled in the fireplace. She’d just finished reading a chapter and had placed the half-drunk cup of tea on the coffee table when she heard the backdoor open.

  “Hi, Annie, I’m home,” her husband, Ed, called out. Hearing his voice, Gretchen jumped off the sofa and ran, white-tipped tail up and wagging, to eagerly greet the retired Lighthouse Cove, New York police chief who’d spent the past few days working as a criminal consultant in a small town located in New York’s southern tier near the Pennsylvania border.

  Ed petted Gretchen, scratched her ears, then walked into the living room, the dog dancing and jumping at his side. Annie, a small woman with short, tousled salt and pepper hair, rose from the sofa to greet him. She was dressed in trim dark blue jeans and a tunic-length cornflower-blue cashmere turtleneck sweater that matched the color of her eyes. Standing on her tiptoes, she gave her tall, lanky, white-haired spouse a hug and a kiss.

  “I’m glad you’re back. I missed you. How’d everything go?”

  “I missed you, too.” Ed beamed as he and his wife kissed again. “It went well, and the police chief is pleased. His detectives caught the murderer across the border in Pennsylvania this morning, and during the few days preceding the capture I worked with him to develop some investigative procedures that will help close cases in the future without having to hire an outside consultant.

  “That force is even smaller than ours, and since the closest city is a hundred miles away, they don’t have easy access to forensic technologists like we do when a violent crime happens. Sorry I didn’t call, but by the time we finished up each evening, it was pretty late.”

  “That’s fine. I appreciated your texts each morning. What’s your next project?”

  “I don’t have one. Since it’s so close to Thanksgiving, I decided that I’m not going to take on any more consulting jobs until after the holidays. As you know, I’ve been working non-stop for almost a year. I need a break and want to start acting like I’m really a retired guy,” Ed responded with a smile.

  “As if you could,” laughed Annie. “What do you plan to do as a,” she held up the index and middle fingers on both hands to form an air quote, “retired guy?”

  “I have plenty to do,” Ed huffed, acting wounded. But his sapphire blue eyes gleamed with amusement. “I want to work on restoring the antique boat that’s been sitting in the garage since last summer and the Datsun 280Z that’s been there almost as long as we’ve owned this house. I also plan to get my metal detector out and do some exploring along the beach before the snow comes; I’m thinking I might even do that tomorrow morning. And I want to have lunch with my Navy buddies and enjoy the holidays with you and our family.”

  “Sounds ambitious,” Annie responded with a tolerant smile, knowing full well that her husband of 40 years couldn’t possibly accomplish all he intended before the holidays or during the next year, for that matter.

  Ed changed the subject. “What did you do while I was away? Did you work or take a little time for yourself for a change?”

  Annie smiled. “I worked, but not too hard. I finally completed the brochure on the history of Lighthouse Cove I’ve been writing so I’ll have it ready for tourist season. You know me, I wordsmith everything I write to death, but I’m at the point where it’s good enough. I started with when French and Dutch settlers came here after the Revolution and continued to the present. I also included information about shipwrecks since we know that pirates sank ships in these waters beginning in the 1600s.”

  “Wasn’t there also a converted British warship that disappeared in the late 1700s?”

  “There was. It was called the HMS Orion, but pirates didn’t sink it. It was on its way from New York to Canada when it capsized during a horrible storm. All who were aboard drowned, including some members of Great Britain’s royal family. It was rumored they were carrying valuable trinkets to be presented to the Canadian governor of York.

  “Divers found what was left of it during an expedition a century later, but they only found bits of the ship’s wreckage, some old coins, dish shards and a few skeletal remains, which because there was no way to scientifically identify them back then, were left to molder at the bottom of the lake and never returned to England.”

  “Sounds interesting. I’d like to read it. Do I have time before dinner?” Annie nodded.

  “Good. But first I want to go upstairs and change. In the meantime, why don’t you pour us each a glass of wine,” Ed requested.

  A short while later Annie, humming an oldies’ song from the 1960s, put the remaining touches on their dinner: a spicy fish chowder; coleslaw with a tangy oil and vinegar dressing and hard, crusty, sourdough rolls while Ed, dressed in jeans and a red plaid flannel sh
irt with wine glass in hand, read the brochure.

  Annie came into the room just as he was finishing. “So, what do you think?” she asked.

  Ed grinned and gave Annie a thumb’s up.

  “Thanks. I’ve got to lay it out, insert the artwork, and take it to our printer so we can have it by early spring. Dinner’s ready. Let’s go eat.”

  Chapter 2

  Emily Bradford, board secretary and head of the gift shop for the Lighthouse Cove Historical Society and Museum, woke up the next morning at about 5 a.m. and couldn’t fall back asleep. It was mid-November and still dark, but she decided she’d get dressed and head out early to get some work done before the board meeting started at 9 a.m.

  A former professor of creative writing at the University of Rochester, the 48-year-old had taken an early retirement three years ago and relocated to the quaint historic village on the shores of Lake Ontario, hoping the breathtaking scenery and quiet lifestyle would inspire her to create her own literary works rather than teaching others how to do it. She was making progress, and had just signed a deal with a publisher for her first book of poetry.

  Still in her nightgown, Emily opened her back door and stepped outside to assess the weather. A scrim of frost was on the grass and the air felt heavy with moisture, but there was no snow, at least not yet. After showering and dressing in a long woolen skirt, turtleneck sweater and high leather boots, the petite woman pulled her glossy shoulder-length hair back and secured it with a velvet band, accentuating her translucent heart-shaped face and wide moss green eyes. She quickly drank a cup of strong black tea infused with milk and a little honey, rinsed the mug and put it in the dishwasher. Carefully cutting the cinnamon streusel coffee cake she’d baked the day before into 12 pieces, she put the plastic lid on the pan and the pan into her canvas tote bag along with her purse, a bottle of water and her cell phone.

  After donning a hooded toggle coat, muffler and knitted mittens, she slung the tote bag over her shoulder and headed out into the brisk, frosty air. The wind blowing in from the northeast had picked up. Putting her head down as a buffer against it, she scurried rather than walked the five blocks to the museum, which stood on a bluff overlooking the lake. She heard the crashing thunder of the waves as they slammed against the shoreline and as she looked up at the milky, starless sky she thought there might be snow later that day.

  Unlocking the door to the museum, she entered the building, flipped the wall switch for the oversized opaque glass schoolhouse pendant light in the hallway, and went into her tiny office, which adjoined the gift shop to the right of the hall. She turned on the small lamp with a low-watt bulb that was on her desk, feeling calmed by the quiet dimness of the pre-dawn room. After hanging her coat on a hook behind her door and placing her tote bag and purse under her desk, she carried the cake down the hall to the board room where she turned on the floor lamp just inside the room, placed the cake on the sideboard, set up the coffee with a timer to start brewing at 8:30 and then returned to her office.

  In addition to completing some paperwork before the meeting, she also wanted to assess what she would need to order for the gift shop when it opened to tourists in May. The posters, photographs and postcards of Lighthouse Cove, provided by a colony of resident artists and photographers, had sold well the past season as had the nautical-inspired gift items, jewelry and locally produced jams, sauces and jellies. Time permitting, she also planned to package some of the jewelry she’d received from orders placed at sales outlets at the end of last season.

  She observed that the door to the cellar––its entrance at the back of her office––was slightly ajar. She got up and shut the door, grumbling about drafts in old buildings, and heard a dull, sharp noise just after she sat down at her desk. The furnace system was old and often rumbled and clanked when it first kicked on. The sound distracted her.

  As she listened more carefully, the clanking got louder, and she wondered if someone else were in the building. She called out, but by then the noise had stopped, and when no one responded, she shrugged and shook her head.

  Nerves again, she thought. Only she, Charles Merrill, the museum’s president; Suzanne Gordon, the board treasurer; and the museum director, Annie DeCleryk, had keys, and none of their cars had been in the parking lot when she’d arrived. She shivered as she felt a cold draft on her back from the wind that was whistling through the cracks of the old gray stone building. With a deep sigh, Emily returned to her paperwork, thinking she probably should get up and check to make sure the furnace was still working and that she had locked the front door.

  Chapter 3

  Ed DeCleryk started out for the beach with his metal detector at 7 a.m. He loved this time, just before dawn, when the village was still quiet. Like Emily, he too had noticed the wind picking up and decided that instead of heading for the wide exposed beach that was closer to his home, he’d walk to the narrow, more sheltered rocky one that lay beneath the bluff where the museum stood. He could see both the bay and the lake as he strolled along the narrow peninsula to his destination and reflected on how the small village had changed since the summer.

  Boats that for months had gridlocked the marinas now sat shrink-wrapped in blue plastic, layered like folded sheets on concrete shelves in high and dry facilities. Docks secured in the water behind beach cottages on the bay had been lifted onto land for winter and placed upended, side by side, like oversized sliding boards. Gift shops where tourists stood in line to taste homemade fudge and purchase Lighthouse Cove T-shirts and memorabilia were shuttered, their doors locked and tightly bolted. Picnic tables and benches where families had sat just a few months earlier to enjoy baskets of fried fish and huge cones of homemade ice cream were piled up like flotsam and jetsam against boarded up snack bars.

  Gulls awakening from slumber flew up as one mass into the sky, screeching, as Ed approached the beach beneath the bluff. Overhead a squadron of Canada geese, silhouetted low against the horizon, flew southwest towards orchards, vineyards and cornfields where they would forage for food. A bald eagle circled above him. To the east he could see drumlins, deeply etched cliffs carved from glaciers thousands of years before, towering like fortresses against the sea.

  Anticipating the damp chill and gusting wind, the lanky 62-year old had pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped an insulated windbreaker over a thick, cotton turtleneck and cable knit sheep’s wool sweater. A pair of thermal-lined duck boots protected his feet from the sandy muck and waves that were slowly swallowing up the beach. Ed clomped along, skimming his detector over the sand and rocks, listening for the tell-tale beeping sound that indicated metal nearby. It was hard to hear with the waves pounding against the shore, but the detector went off a couple times yielding some brass nails, a metal dresser knob, a rusted chain and what appeared to be an old coin. He picked up the coin and put it in his pocket.

  As he skimmed it over a greater and wider span of rocks and sand, the detector started beeping again as he neared a stand of tasseled wheat-colored sea-grasses that intermingled with decaying wildflowers clustered together around some boulders against the base of the bluff.

  Chapter 4

  At 7:15 a.m. the phone rang at the Lighthouse Cove police station. Joe Marion, the dispatcher, took the call and ran to get Ben Fisher, the police chief, who’d been at the station since 6:30 for a meeting with his deputy chief, Carrie Ramos. They were just finishing up when Joe appeared in the doorway of the office and told them that Charles Merrill was on the line and sounded very upset but insisted on speaking only with Ben. Ben, shaking his head, picked up. “Good morning, Charles, what can I do for you?”

  Trying unsuccessfully to stay calm, Charles shouted that there had been a break-in at the museum. He told the chief he’d come in early to prepare for the board meeting, finding both front and back doors ajar; artifacts, memorabilia and tourist materials scattered everywhere, and Emily Bradford’s coat and scarf hanging on a peg in her office. “I think she was here to start the coffee and to do some w
ork before our board meeting began and must have startled a burglar,” he cried. “But she’s not here now. What could have happened to her?”

  Ben told Charles that he was on his way and instructed him to lock the door and not let anyone, including other board members, into the building. He quickly briefed Carrie, then headed for his patrol car and was just getting into it when Carrie ran out of the station and yelled for him to stop.

  “Ed DeCleryk just called from his cell phone. He’s found Emily Bradford’s body along the base of the bluff beneath the museum. He said he’ll stay with her until one of us gets there, but we’ll have to move quickly. The wind’s picked up, and the water’s rising.”

  Ben closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “That’s a terrible shame,” he said, then continued, “I need to get to the museum, Carrie, and talk with Charles about the break-in. There’s a possibility Emily’s death may be related to it. You’ll have to go to the beach and meet Ed. Before you go, ask Joe to call Mike Garfield to let him know what’s going on and that there’s some urgency for him to get to the site to examine the body because of the rising water. Also, please ask Joe to call Dave Burns at the firehouse so he can get his rescue crew to retrieve Emily’s body as soon as Mike is finished.”

  Carrie nodded and ran back inside the police station while Ben turned the lights and sirens on in the patrol car and, tires screeching, raced toward the museum. As he drove, he wondered what was so valuable there that a thief might want to kill for it.

  The snow was starting to fall, small, feather-like scattered flurries at first, then heavier and denser until it began to cover the ground. Charles Merrill, trembling from nerves and the cold, thought it might be March before the village would see grass again. As he looked out the front window, the 75-year-old retired University of Toronto professor of archaeology saw Carrie Ramos’ and the medical examiner’s cars speeding down the road towards the lower end of the beach.