She Stopped for Death

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  Little Library Mysteries

  A Most Curious Murder

  Nut House Mysteries

  (writing as Elizabeth Lee)

  Nuts and Buried

  Snoop to Nuts

  A Tough Nut to Kill

  Emily Kincaid Mysteries

  Dead Little Dolly

  Dead Dogs and Englishmen

  Dead Floating Lovers

  Dead Dancing Women

  Dead Sleeping Shaman

  Also by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  Gift of Evil

  She Stopped for Death

  A Little Library Mystery

  Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-013-6

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-014-3

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-68331-015-0

  ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-016-7

  Cover design by Matthew Kalamidas/StoneHouse Creative.

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First Edition: January 2017

  Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,

  Until we meet a snake;

  ’Tis then we sigh for houses,

  And our departure take

  At that enthralling gallop

  That only childhood knows.

  A snake is summer’s treason,

  And guile is where it goes.

  Emily Dickinson

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  In Bear Falls, Michigan, summer lay like hot lead over the shops along Oak Street. It was August, and it was a Saturday night. The stores had emptied out a while ago. The heavy air smudged the neon Closed signs of Harrington’s Drugstore, Trixie’s House of Beauty, Laymen Brothers Hardware, the US post office, Suzy Q’s Bakery, Sally’s Florist, and Townsend’s Antiques and dimmed the running marquee of the Falls movie house, where the last show had already let out. Even the mysterious Myrtle Lambert had locked the door to her restaurant by now and, holding onto her ever-present, floppy green hat, started off down Oak toward her home on Pine Street, muttering as she walked about something terrible in the hot air. “Something awful, for sure,” she whispered to herself, then wondered, as she loped along, if she had enough vanilla for the French toast in the morning.

  The summer tourists who came in flocks to see the waterfall in Cane Park were gone for the day. The dark shadow of the park’s lone statue fell over beds of roses and petunias. The statue seemed taller and more ominous at night than during the day, when it looked like what it was: the likeness of a slightly dumpy town father.

  Down Oak Street, north of the shops, the imposing dowager Abigail Cane bid her dinner guests good-bye and shut the massive doors of her Victorian mansion against the growing wind. She leaned toward her new secretary, the pretty and highly capable Elizabeth Wheatley, and said she thought the dinner with the town council went very well.

  The objective of her late-dinner parties was to convince the town politicians that it was time to pull the bronze commemorative statue of her father, Joshua Cane, from Cane Park, melt it down, and turn it into something of more value: a pile of cannonballs, sewer grates, or maybe ornate restroom signs with bronze branches and flowers outlining Men and Women.

  She smiled as she pictured his statue coming down, its bronze head rolling, the arms coming off with soul-tearing cracks. She lived the imagined moment again and again as she sat through those endless dinners, persuading council members to give up the man’s ugly gift. And she lived for the day that she would proudly point to the ladies’ room sign as all that was left of Joshua Cane—or perhaps it would be the sewer grates, or the stack of cannonballs, whatever it took to get rid of the man.

  “One more dinner party,” Abigail said to Elizabeth as she sighed, then unclasped her diamond necklace and let it slither down to her open hand. She yawned. “And then we’ll throw a party for the entire town. We’ll sing and dance. How my father hated parties.”

  Elizabeth, already a friend to Abigail after only two months, nodded. “I’ll take care of everything if you’ll tell me what you would like.”

  Abigail clapped her hands softly. “A celebration for the people of Bear Falls. And a celebration of art, because he hated art the way he hated every expression of the human spirit.”

  She clapped her hands again. “And I know just the thing. Our own hometown poet, Emily Sutton. Her first book of poetry was praised. And then she came home and never left that house over on Pewee Swamp. But, of course, she’s been forgotten now by all but a few of us.” Abigail thought hard. “As Joshua falls, so Emily Sutton shall be raised. We’ll have a continuous reading. Everyone doing their share. Her poetry will fill the air!”

  Elizabeth gave her usually controlled employer an odd look. “Don’t you want work by a more famous poet? I mean, work that resonates today? We could read Carl Sandburg: ‘I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, / so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. / Keep moving and forget the post mortems.’” Elizabeth smiled broadly at the line—it could save a person’s life. “From what you’ve told me of your father, it seems somehow fitting.”

  Abigail shook her head. She didn’t want the obvious. She wanted Emily Sutton, whose poetry had stayed with her through the worst of Joshua’s cruelties.

  “You don’t know,” she almost whispered. “Emily knew who we were. I was in my twenties when her book came out. I was shy. Father made fun of my height, of my full figure, of my nose that was too large. He had a comment for every part of my body and expressed them all in front of everyone. Through most of my twenties, I wanted to die. And then I read her book, and this line that stayed in my head: ‘Down to dark phantasms, entailing trespass in the brave. / In boots and stick, sent flying by the slither of a snake.’

  “Father was that snake. I was the one sent flying, though I was brave inside. In her words I found hope for myself. I wasn’t alone.”

  “Then we will read the work of your wonderful Emily Sutton.” Elizabeth smiled and dipped her head, bringing her well-cut blonde hair down over her eyes. “Would she att
end, do you think?”

  Abigail thought awhile. “How I wish. But I doubt it. Too many years spent in that house with her sister, Lorna. The mother’s tragically gone. An accident so terrible . . .”

  “Then we’ll read her poems anyway. We’ll read them again and again. A marathon of Emily Sutton’s poetry to chase evil from the park.”

  And their plan was set in motion, though neither woman could have imagined the long, dark path ahead of them.

  * * *

  Out in his woodworking shop, Tony Ralenti stretched, then bent to rub his knee where a bullet had entered a few years back, when he was a detective on the Detroit police force. He yawned, looked down at his watch, and found it was almost eleven. Too late to call Jenny and wish her good-night—it might disturb Dora, her mother. He missed Jenny’s voice, something he felt more and more often. He needed to see her, talk to her, be with her. It wasn’t what he’d expected, moving here to Bear Falls. He didn’t expect to meet anyone like Jenny Weston and was afraid to hope, even now, that his life could turn out to be different from what it was.

  He snapped off the light in the shop, leaving the new Little Library house he was building behind him. The house was a replica of one of Dora Weston’s Little Libraries, which were set on posts in front of her house on Elderberry Street. Her curbside libraries were a huge success in town, and the rules were simple: take a book, leave a book. Now the idea was spreading across Michigan, from small town to small town, bringing books to everybody who lived where there were no municipal libraries. Due to the high demand, Tony had started building the houses. Many people wanted a replica of their house and sent him photographs. Others only asked for a receptacle that was strong and kept out rain and snow. For those, he used the plans for Dora’s two Little Libraries: Adults and Children.

  He shut the door to the workshop and took his time walking across the grass through the humid August night. He swatted moths hanging around his porch light then heard the faint ringing of the phone inside. He hurried, nursing his bad leg up the porch steps, all the while hoping it was Jenny.

  It wasn’t.

  It wasn’t anyone he wanted to hear from.

  * * *

  In the dark, a shadowy figure stood in front of the old fieldstone house on Thimbleberry Street. She bent to open the crooked gate, held still, and listened to the noises coming from Pewee Swamp. Night birds gave strange cries before settling into nests built in tangled trees. Animals the woman never could put names to gave soft grunts, then screams, as they fought off predators. Everything went quiet as she waited until the wind, blowing in from Lake Michigan, stirred the hemlocks into making an odd sighing sound. The wind got stronger. A dead limb crashed into the swamp.

  Satisfied that all was well with her familiar world, the dark figure arranged the bonnet atop her head and, with a flashlight in hand, looked anxiously over her shoulder at the draped windows of the old house.

  She stepped through the gate, clicking it closed behind her, and breathlessly began her unaccustomed walk in the warm night air.

  * * *

  Miles away, in another town, a woman sat in the front seat of her car in a closed garage. She stared straight ahead, out the car’s front window, though she saw nothing. Flies buzzed around her head. She didn’t see them, didn’t hear them, and didn’t mind them. She never had, not in all the days of the weeks she’d been sitting there, watching nothing.

  Chapter 2

  The wind from the swamp didn’t reach Elderberry Street, where Dora Weston, her daughter, Jenny, and their neighbor, Zoe Zola, along with Zoe’s small, one-eyed dog, Fida, rocked and fanned themselves in the thickening dark of the Westons’ screened porch. From time to time the women remarked how there were fewer moths tonight, then talked about the heat and how they hoped a breeze would find them and the mosquitoes wouldn’t. They wiped sweat from their faces, drank tall glasses of iced tea, and spoke in whispers while waiting for something to happen.

  By ten thirty, the scratching, piercing calls of mating cicadas had quieted. Fireflies, pinpricks in the darkness, slowed their circles and disappeared. Families up and down Elderberry shut their doors, and soon only a single child’s dream-cry broke the quiet.

  Dora Weston sighed and slowed her rocking. “I swear she’s been here the last two Saturdays in a row. I hope she comes tonight.”

  The other two yawned and continued waiting with her.

  There’d been an orange moon. Truly big and round and deeply orange. The kind of moon that gives you a feeling of something strange going on around you. But then the breeze died, a mist moved in from the lake, and the orange moon disappeared. That had been something to talk about while it lasted, but now there was little left to say. A starless sky. Thickening air that predicted rain during the night. Zoe briefly fell asleep with Fida snoring on her lap. Jenny thought about her childhood bed at the back of the house. Dora hummed softly to herself.

  At first, when the women came out to sit and wait, there’d been talk of what could happen if the figure appeared, then talk of whether it was the right night or if rain might stop her.

  “Saturday,” Dora said in a voice she reserved for dark places, where awkward things came out when one spoke too loudly.

  “It could be anybody.” Jenny yawned and thought fondly of her bed again. What bothered her most about waiting wasn’t that some odd poet might or might not show up but that she hadn’t heard from Tony.

  “No.” Dora’s whisper was emphatic. “I thought about that. I even worried it was somebody fooling around out there that first night. You know how bad it was when Johnny Arlen broke my library box, and we had to start over. New books. Two new boxes. But then I just knew—it was Emily Sutton. Don’t ask me how. Who else would sneak over here at night? I’m positive. Probably coming after poetry books and, wouldn’t you know it, I’ve got nothing of any real value in the box. No Emily Dickinson. No Sylvia Plath.”

  Zoe moved in her big chair. Her short legs, sticking straight out in front of her, were cramped. “Maybe you should have called to her,” she suggested, stretching her legs and arms and yawning. “Could be she just wants company.”

  Zoe Zola, a little person with a huge personality and an even larger talent as a writer of books on fairy tales and famous writers, lived next door to the Westons in a pretty white bungalow with a red door and many gardens. The garden beds were big and passionate, with brightly colored flowers. Nested in among the daisies and the roses were fairy houses of all sizes—castles to caves. In or near each house, a fairy peeked from behind mullioned windows or danced down a pebbled lane. One hid behind an old mill. A golden-haired fairy sat at a castle window, looking out. Others gathered around a cold fire pit, while still others peeked from a rocky cave.

  “Emily Sutton? Heavens no. I would have scared her, and myself, too, if I’d hollered.”

  “But Mom, how can you be so sure it’s her?” Jenny Weston rocked and thought she’d be better off looking over a Little Library house plan Tony Ralenti had dropped off that morning, wanting her opinion. She was beginning to imagine it wasn’t her opinion he wanted as much as to see her and talk to her. For the most part, she refused to think about that, or hope for anything. She wasn’t good at love. She’d had enough strikeouts now to know better than to hope she had a place in the game.

  “I watched her walk away,” Dora said. “I didn’t have a clue who it was that first night. I knew it wasn’t a teenager though. It was a woman. Small statured, you know. She had a skirt on, ankle-length. I thought that was funny for August. And there was something draped over her head.” Dora stopped rocking, waking Fida, who stretched, jumped down, then made her way to Dora, then to Jenny, sniffing them to make sure things hadn’t changed while she slept. “Can you think of anybody else in Bear Falls who would dress like that? I’m sure it’s Emily Sutton. How I would love to meet her. She was quite a famous poet for a while, you know. Had a well-reviewed book of poems out and traveled the country giving readings. That was before we mov
ed here—at least twenty-five years or more ago, I’d say. Abigail Cane told me the story. Said one day Emily came back to town and disappeared into that house down on Pewee Swamp with her sister, Lorna, and her mother and almost never came out again. As if she fell off the face of the earth, it was. Then there was that awful fire.”

  “Humph, never heard of her.” Zoe Zola pushed to the front of her rocker. “And I would say that I, of all people, would know the poets.”

  “Only if they wrote ages ago,” Jenny teased, because she knew Zoe’s love for Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, Emily Dickinson, and P. L. Travers.

  “That’s not true. I’m very much up to date.”

  “Name one modern poet,” Jenny challenged her, as much out of boredom as from interest.

  “Robert Creeley. ‘He wants to be a brutal old man . . .’ I met him at the Vermont Studio Center when I was just out of high school. A writers’ retreat in Johnson, Vermont. He seemed very sad. I remember, at the end of our workshop, he said he enjoyed my company.” She sniffed and waited a minute for a response to her bit of name-dropping. When Dora and Jenny gave her silence back, she slipped from her chair to the floor with a thump, reached down to scoop up Fida, and said she was going home since nothing was going to happen there that night.

  “You can’t leave,” Dora protested.

  “I’m tired, Dora, and I’ve got the manuscript of my Two Alices: Adventures in Madness and Murder to e-mail off tomorrow. I promised Christopher Morley. He’ll be tapping that watch of his at a great rate if the day goes on and he gets nothing from me. I know you don’t like fantasy, Jenny, but I would swear my editor is the White Rabbit himself.”

  “Just a while longer, Zoe,” Dora begged. “I don’t want her frightened away. I’d like to walk down and speak to her. I hope she won’t mind if I say a quiet hello.”

  “All right.” Zoe leaned back against the rocker. “I just don’t see the reason for excitement. She’s probably not the one you think she is anyway. And Dora, you know I’m not one to throw cold water on anybody’s thrills, but I’ve been smelling a foul odor all day. And you know what that means.”