Death of a Toy Soldier

by Barbara Early

  “You and me,” he said. “Specifically, me. If a second autopsy suggests that some kind of foul play led to Sy’s death, I’ve now been placed at both scenes.”

  “You told me you haven’t been here for years.”

  “That’s true. But you gotta figure the good chief’s alarm bells started ringing on overload the second he walked into the room and saw me here.”

  After about fifteen minutes of questioning Chief Young about what would happen next, the mourners at Sy’s wake started to settle down, much to the chagrin of Irene and Lenora, who seemed to be enjoying the show immensely. Family members covered leftovers with plastic wrap and aluminum foil, and one by one, the lights in the house were switched on, not because the sun had set, but because the gray snow clouds obscured what little light came in through the wavy glass windows.

  I scored one more clue for the evening when I flipped on the lamp above a small secretary desk. On the top of a pile of mail was a bill from a local health care service, the same one Parker and I had used to help us take care of Dad for those first few weeks after he was released from the hospital.

  Dad had sunk into a chair and was rubbing his knee. It was time to get him home, or at least back to Cathy and Parker’s, where he could elevate and ice it. I had gained Jack’s attention and asked for our coats when the door flung open and a young woman walked in. She was in her late teens or early twenties at most, maybe even a student based on the bulging backpack slung over one shoulder. She wore yoga pants and a heavy sweatshirt but was still woefully underdressed for the weather. She stopped in the entryway, her jaw agape as she stared from face to face.

  Irene elbowed Lenora. “It’s the ditz!” she said.

  Mrs. Wallace walked over to greet the latecomer. Ken watched with interest, as did my father, as if they expected trouble to materialize. I tried to recall what the two sisters had said about a ditz coming to replace the aide who had died. Was this young woman Sy’s last health care aide? Had the old man died under her care?

  And did she have motive to kill either of the men? I supposed she could have killed the aide to replace him. Although as a motive, it seemed sketchy. Home health care jobs always seemed to be in abundance and didn’t sound all that appealing. Sponge baths and bedpans and such. I wasn’t sure if they paid enough to overcome the indignities of the job, much less to make them enticing enough to kill for. But what if the former aide had to be eliminated to allow this woman access to kill Sy? Along with the rest of the guests, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the girl.

  “I think I saw you at the funeral,” Mrs. Wallace said, “but we’re about to close up here.” She started guiding the newcomer to the door.

  The young woman planted her feet, put her hands on her hips, and stood her ground. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll thank you all to clear out, and take your mess with you.”

  Mrs. Wallace grew nearly apoplectic. Her face paled to white, then her cheeks flamed red. Her fists tensed, and she vibrated in place. She resembled one of those rockets in Florida, when the engines have fired up, moments before they leave the ground. “Excuse me?” she said. “And who exactly do you think you are?”

  A rumble of conversation went up among the relatives. I was glad Ken and Dad were there, because the Wallace tribe was getting worked up. Lenora and Irene craned their necks for a better view of what was transpiring.

  The young woman didn’t seem alarmed. She lowered her backpack to the floor, unzipped it, and rummaged through the notebooks and papers inside. Finally, she tugged out a sheet of paper and held it in her teeth while she rezipped her pack. She smoothed a few wrinkles from it by rubbing it across her thigh. Then she held up what appeared to be some kind of official document.

  “My name is Kimmie Kaminski. Well, Kimmie Kaminski DuPont. And as of five days ago, Sy’s wife.”

  For five solid seconds, time stood still.

  Then everyone started talking at once. Some rushed forward, others stepped back in shock, and almost all the residents of the room collided with one another, jostling like bumper cars.

  Ken pushed forward to examine the document. Once he did, he whistled for silence.

  “That can’t be genuine,” Mrs. Wallace said. Her complexion had cycled back to ashen.

  “I’ll check it out with the courthouse and make sure it’s been filed properly,” Ken said, “but it looks real to me.”

  Kimmie Kaminski DuPont stood straighter, strutting all five feet four inches of herself over to the coat rack, where she removed an armload of coats and started slinging them randomly to the crowd. “Now, Chief, if you could ask everyone to leave. I’m tired, and I didn’t invite any of these trespassers inside my house.”

  Chapter 9

  The mourners slowly made their way to their cars. They had to. If they’d moved any faster, all the silver, china, and bric-a-brac they’d shoved into their pockets—when they thought no one was looking—would have clanked and clattered. Dad had volunteered himself and me to escort Lenora and Irene down to the sidewalk and then back up the parallel walk one house over. From next door, they would indeed have a pretty good view of all the goings-on at Sy’s house but wouldn’t be able to hear anything, which is probably how they’d mistaken the old gentleman’s new twentysomething wife for a health care worker.

  “Sy, you old devil,” I said under my breath. This was going to put a new twist on the Wallaces’ family reunions.

  Before I could corral Dad to the car, he’d taken up the trail of some footprints around the old man’s—or rather, Kimmie’s—house. A fresh layer of snow had fallen on top, but it couldn’t obscure where a group of people had trudged around the house, from door to window to window, apparently searching for a way in. Soon, Ken joined us.

  “These from the fellows you took in earlier?” Dad asked.

  “Well, uh,” Ken said. “I didn’t actually take them in.”

  Dad squatted to get a closer look at the tracks in the snow, then peered off at more footprints cutting through the yard. His face quirked into a smug half smile. “They got away from you, didn’t they?”

  “It was harder running through the snow than I thought it would be,” Ken said. “I got a good look at them, though.”

  “Anybody I know?” Dad used his cane to pull himself back up.

  Ken exhaled, sending up a puff of white breath that momentarily obscured his face. “I’ll let you know when I catch them.”

  “Any idea who?” Dad asked.

  “Kids.” Ken pulled up his collar against the chill. “If they were over eighteen, they were just barely. It’s a small town. I only have to catch one and ask around to figure out who he runs with. Bring ’em all in. One of them will talk or someone will take a plea. You know how these things work.”

  Dad was silent as he continued to stare at the snow-covered tracks. “Think it’s a coincidence that they targeted this house on this particular day?”

  I winced. Dad used the c-word on purpose. One thing I learned as a cop’s daughter, the police hate coincidences.

  Ken wouldn’t be baited. He merely shrugged.

  Dad took off his glove and used a knuckle to rub the corner of his mouth. “Lots of coincidences. The man who died at the shop, working for a man who also died this week and whose house was broken into.”

  “And occupied by a woman none of the family knows,” Ken added. “Yeah, I know.”

  Dad started laughing and kept laughing as he walked toward the car. I had to run to keep up with him. When he got there, he opened the door and spun back toward Ken. “Good luck, Chief. I just gotta tell you, I’m glad this isn’t my case.” He saluted with his cane and climbed into the car, leaving Ken standing in the front yard of Sy’s house in the swirling snow.

  ###

  The laughter died out pretty quickly as we pulled away from the curb.

  “Can we go back to the shop?” Dad asked.

  I shook my head. “Still a crime scene. The chief said he’d let us know when it was safe to go ba
ck.”

  “I think he’s keeping us out of our own place on purpose. I suspect he doesn’t like me very much.”

  “Why would he dislike you?” Perhaps the taunting I’d just witnessed was a clue.

  “Young fellow trying to make his way in a new job. He doesn’t want an old geezer around all the time, showing him how it’s done.”

  “Are you a show-off, Dad?”

  “Well, not really. I meant he might think that.”

  I signaled to turn down the street that would take us to Parker and Cathy’s house.

  Dad cleared his throat. “I’m not ready to go back yet. I’m not ready to sit back in a recliner, locked out of my house and out of my shop, and wait to see where the evidence falls and how much of it piles up against me. I want to do something.” Dad turned and gave me his father-knows-best expression.

  I pulled into an available parking space, shifted the car into park, and twisted in my seat to face him. “You’re retired, Dad. You’re not part of the force anymore.”

  “Technically, I’ve been deputized.”

  I glared at him.

  “You could be my partner,” he said. “You’ve always been observant and insightful.”

  “I already am your partner. We sell old toys now, remember?”

  “Not when our shop is cordoned off with crime scene tape, we don’t. I’m not saying we take over the investigation. But there are a lot of angles to cover, and that young man can’t be everywhere at once. Maybe we just help out a little and check on a few things.” He flashed me a smile, his eyes twinkling. “What do you say?”

  I could feel myself being swept into one of Dad’s schemes. That’s the thing about folks who are sincerely out to save the world: they make excellent recruiters. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

  Moments later, we were back on the road, on our way to the health care agency the victim had worked for. I knew a lot about the place already. They were small but had five-star ratings just about everywhere, which, considering what they did, was impressive. The two different women who’d come to the house were personable and professional and flirted just enough with Dad to get him to do their bidding, which was basically following the doctor’s orders.

  A police car was leaving as we arrived. Dad craned his neck to see who was driving it.

  “Looks like this angle is covered,” I said. “Still want to go in?”

  “Yes, but let’s give them a few minutes,” he said. Dad watched the building and the clock, as if frozen in place.

  I rummaged through my purse and found a pack of cinnamon gum. I also encountered my nail file and spruced up my nails while we waited. I had just brushed the dust from my pant legs when Dad reached for the car door.

  “Now,” he said.

  I scrambled to stuff everything back into my purse and had to run across the parking lot to keep up with him. By the time I got to the door, he was holding it open.

  The receptionist in the modest anteroom looked up and smiled in recognition. “Liz McCall. Henry. How nice to see you.” She shifted her attention to my father. “I was just thinking about you.”

  Dad leaned his elbows on the desk and raised an eyebrow. “Good thoughts, I hope.”

  The receptionist blushed, just a little. The rather plain fiftyish woman had been very concerned when I’d been there to contract help for Dad, and now, watching them grin at each other, I wondered if there’d been another reason. I checked the nameplate sitting on her desk. Edith Kingston. It would be helpful to know her name if she ended up being my stepmother someday.

  “The police were here a few minutes ago,” she said.

  Dad had the gall to act surprised. “No trouble, I hope.”

  “I’m afraid so.” Edith cocked her head and sighed. “It seems that one of our aides has apparently been killed.”

  “How dreadful!” Dad put on his most sympathetic expression. “I’m so sorry. Was it someone you knew well?”

  And without even the hint of interrogation, out the information flew. The dead man was one Sullivan O’Grady. The police had presented Edith with a picture of the corpse.

  “Can you imagine?” Edith’s eyes glistened at the point of tears, and Dad murmured that he was sure it was all in the line of duty and my, wasn’t she brave. This from the man who had told me to suck it up when I came down with chicken pox on my tenth birthday.

  Sullivan, a.k.a. Sully to his friends and family, was a model employee, but not quite the model family man, apparently. He had two addresses on file, the first on a quiet street in a neighborhood of modest ranch houses just outside the village. This he had shared with his wife. The more recent address was a former fleabag motel, also just outside of town, recently converted to fleabag efficiency units, rented by the month, and populated primarily by the recently single.

  “Sad how many marriages break up these days,” Dad said. “I wonder what went wrong.”

  “Couldn’t have been Sully,” Edith said. “Everybody loved him. Military veteran. Hard worker. Faithful to a fault.”

  “You know, the service can change people. Some of our boys overseas have seen too much. I gather that O’Grady was injured over there?”

  Edith’s brows furrowed. “Not that I know about.”

  “Well, I thought it might explain something odd. See, the chief told us that O’Grady had no fingerprints, and I wondered if maybe his fingers were burned or something.”

  “I’d have no way of knowing that. Only . . . he’d have to be fingerprinted to become a licensed CNA in New York State. He must have had fingerprints at that point.”

  Dad nodded thoughtfully, then cocked his head. “O’Grady never had any problems with any of his other patients?”

  By this point, I had kind of faded into the background. Edith only had eyes for my father, and I suspected that any contributions to the conversation from me would probably be construed as interference. Besides, I was good at fading into the background.

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. All the patients loved him,” she said, then dropped her gaze. “Well, almost all. Some are never pleased. You could send out Mother Theresa, and they’d find something wrong with her.”

  “Any that we might talk with?” Dad said.

  “I’m afraid not,” Edith said.

  “Privacy rules?” Dad inched closer. I wasn’t sure if he was seriously interested in Edith or just playing James Bond to her Miss Moneypenny.

  “I’m afraid their names wouldn’t help. Sully worked mainly with terminal patients. It’s not easy work, but he had a special gift.”

  “None of his former patients are alive?” Dad asked.

  Edith shook her head, then dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “And no complaints. At least not formal ones. He was very good with patients and their families.”

  “Never any hints of anything . . . missing or misplaced?”

  “What do you mean?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, you know how families can be sometimes.” Dad adopted a casual air. “Aunt Matilda, who nobody has bothered with for years, supposedly left them an antique snuffbox dating back to the Revolutionary War, and it’s gone missing. Good old Auntie probably hocked it for bingo money years ago, but the stranger who was in the house during those final days makes a good suspect.”

  Edith crossed her arms. “We’ve had that happen. Turns my stomach.” She looked up at Dad. “But not with Sully. He was a dream employee. Going to be hard to replace that man.”

  “What can you tell me about the person you sent to replace him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dad leaned his elbows on the counter. “Well, when Sully didn’t report for work, you must have sent someone out to cover his patient.”

  “No.” Edith shook her head. “We never knew he wasn’t working! Nobody told us he failed to show up. You could have knocked me over with a feather when the police said he’d been dead for days. And his client as well.” She paused. “I suppose that’s why nobody called.” She bit h
er lip. “You don’t think Mr. DuPont could have died of neglect, do you?” Her eyes went wild with panic. “That would be bad.”

  While Dad murmured vague reassurances, becoming more touchy-feely every moment, I sat back, literally, on the lumpy couch in the lobby and thumbed through a magazine while I unashamedly listened to the remainder of their conversation. Despite the privacy rules, Edith eventually let slip that Sully had also worked for the mayor’s family when his father was terminal. Perhaps I could learn something about Sully from East Aurora’s first lady.

  By the time we left, Dad was loaded with potential leads and a possible love interest, while I’d sustained a paper cut and toxic exposure to a perfumed magazine insert.

  “Home, James?” I said.

  Dad shook his head. “Just beginning. How about the doughnut shop?”

  “Back to your cop ways, huh? A peanut stick for your thoughts.”

  “Oh, they’re not for me,” he said. “We’re going to pay a condolence call on the grieving widow.”

  ###

  Dad was good on his word and held the dozen doughnuts he’d purchased unopened on his lap all the way to Mrs. O’Grady’s house, outside of East Aurora, in a less historic—and more affordable—neighboring community. By the time we arrived, though, I’d downed half my coffee. I opened the car door and brushed the pieces of peanut that had fallen off my doughnut into the street. They’d make some enterprising chipmunk very happy.

  The O’Grady house was like most of the other houses on the tree-lined street: modest two- or three-bedroom vinyl-sided ranches built in the 1950s, with asphalt driveways and large windows that looked into living rooms. They were popular with first-time buyers, and many of these houses were nesting grounds for young families, as evidenced by the explosion of half-buried Little Tikes cars and more than one perky snowman with rotting carrot noses.

  Every square inch of the O’Grady’s yard was trampled with tiny boot prints, and a snow disc lay half buried next to a mound of snow left from shoveling the drive. The sound of a crying child hit us before we made it to the door.