“Don’t worry about Alex,” Patsy said. “He can’t hear a word you say unless you shout right into his ear.”
From firsthand experience, Sherri knew this was true, but she still hesitated.
Patsy plucked a napkin from the nearby dispenser and wiped up a spot of coffee, crumpling the napkin in one hand when the tabletop was clean. “I guess maybe there’s something else I should tell you.”
Sherri waited, watching in fascination as Patsy smoothed the napkin flat again. “Same time as I saw those kids, I caught sight of someone else in the town square.”
Although she was careful not to react outwardly, Sherri felt a jolt of excitement pass through her. “When? What time was this?”
“It was just before the fireworks started.” With precise movements, Patsy tore the napkin into long, thin strips.
Disappointment replaced elation. That was too early. But Patsy wasn’t done with her revelations.
“I’m thinking I must have seen him when he was on his way to Lowe Street, right before he up and killed Jason Graye.”
Sherri stared at her, momentarily at a loss for words. When the ability to speak came back to her, she all but shouted at Patsy. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve thought all along that you saw the killer?”
“I don’t know that I did!” Offended, Patsy left the booth in a rush. “If I was sure, I’d have told you before now. All I saw was a shape. Nothing I can identify.”
Calm down, Sherri warned herself. Honey, not vinegar.
“I’m sorry, Patsy. Of course you’d have said if you knew who it was. Sit down again. Please?”
Looking grumpy, Patsy complied. She scooped up the napkin shreds and stuffed them into the pocket of her apron.
“Thank you. Now, please, tell me everything. Was there something about this person that made you suspicious of him?”
“I didn’t think anything was all that peculiar at the time, although he was keeping his head down, like he didn’t want to be recognized.” She frowned. “Now that I think about it, he must have cut across the grass. There’s no path where he was walking.”
Hard to see the KEEP OFF signs in the dark, Sherri thought. Was Patsy’s information relevant or not? Anyone who lived in the area might have cut through the square.
“When I heard about the murder, I got to wondering if that’s where he was headed. You know what they say—hindsight is twenty/twenty.” Patsy chuckled, but Sherri heard no amusement in the sound.
Both women fell silent when the bell over the door sounded and a new customer walked in. Sherri recognized Louie, owner of Graziano’s Pizza, and expected Patsy to get up to wait on him. Instead, Louie headed straight for the small alcove where Patsy had installed a couple of coffee grinders and several bins of coffee beans.
“Taking two pounds,” Louie called out. “Put it on my tab.”
“You got it,” Patsy answered.
A moment later, the sound of grinding beans sent a heavenly aroma into air already perfumed with cinnamon and spice from Patsy’s baked goods.
“He can’t hear us over that racket,” Patsy said. “You got more questions?”
“Do you have any suspicion about who it was that you saw?”
“Wish I did. I couldn’t even say man or woman for certain, except that I had the impression it was a man.” She lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug.
“I don’t suppose you’d hazard a guess as to where he came from?”
Patsy shook her head. The look of worry on her face intensified. “Could have parked somewhere east of the town square and walked to Lowe Street. That would account for him coming back the same way, right?”
Although the coffee grinder was still going strong, Sherri lowered her voice and leaned toward Patsy. “As you’ve already guessed, someone did come this way after the murder. It could well be that he left a car somewhere. It’s also possible he lives or works in the neighborhood. He might have ducked inside a building.”
Patsy went stiff as a poker. “Are you accusing me of hiding a killer?”
“Of course not! Where did that idea come from?”
“Who do you suspect, then?” Patsy narrowed her eyes and fixed Sherri with a basilisk stare. “Huh! You think Dolores Mayfield did him in, don’t you? Well, you’re a damn fool if you think that. She wouldn’t kill anybody, not even a lowlife like Jason Graye. She had worse in mind for him.”
“Worse?”
“Lawsuits.” Patsy’s head bobbed up and down on her scrawny neck. “She intended to take him to the cleaners in court. There’s nothing Graye would have hated more than being ordered to pay damages.”
“Damages for what?”
“Mental anguish, of course, caused by his attempt to shut down the library.” Patsy rubbed her hands together, a gleeful look in her eyes. “He’d have been some pissed, let me tell you, when he had to shell out thousands of dollars just to get Dolores off his back.”
The noise from the coffee grinder abruptly stopped. Sherri took that as her cue to leave. Patsy wasn’t the only one she had to talk to today.
* * *
The Fitzwarren house was out past Dr. Sharon’s clinic, on Elm Street but a good quarter mile from the town square. Forewarned that Amie’s father wouldn’t take kindly to the news that his daughter had disobeyed him, Sherri resolved to be careful not to blow the girl’s cover—that she’d been studying with a friend. She didn’t anticipate any problem getting permission to talk with Amie. The Fitz-warrens already knew the police were looking for information on Beth Hogencamp and that Beth and Amie were BFFs.
As it turned out, no excuse was necessary. Amie was alone at the house.
“We were watching the fireworks,” she said in answer to Sherri’s question. “I didn’t notice anyone else around.”
She was a pretty girl, blond and leggy and a few inches taller than Sherri—but then, almost everyone was. That Amie was also skinny as a rail bothered Sherri more than her greater height. She hoped the teenager wasn’t starving herself in an effort to look like some emaciated movie star.
“So, no one ran past you while you were sitting there?” she asked.
Amie’s blush gave her away. She wouldn’t have noticed an earthquake, as long as she and her boyfriend were engrossed in each other.
“Did you notice when I left the municipal building and cut across the northwest corner of the square?”
Amie shook her head.
“But you were facing that way, right?” The fireworks had been set off at The Spruces, and the hotel was northwest of the center of the village. Even if they were more interested in making out than in watching the show, it stood to reason that they’d want a good view of the pyrotechnics.
“I guess so.”
Not the brightest bulb, Sherri decided. “Do you think Kent saw anything?”
Her brow furrowed, as if it took a great deal of effort to come up with an answer to this question. “I don’t think so.”
“You sound a little uncertain.”
“Well, he did stop . . . I mean . . . he acted kind of funny for a minute there, but then more fireworks went off and everything was fine again.”
“Any idea where Kent is today?” The Humphreys lived on the road to Fallstown, near the turnoff to the hotel and close to the gas station and convenience store Sherri’s father owned.
“He’s probably at work,” Amie said.
Sherri waited a beat, then had to prompt the girl. “Where?”
“Willett’s Store.”
The answer surprised Sherri. Since when did her father hire help? He was the original “I’d rather do it myself” guy.
Thanking Amie for her cooperation, Sherri drove straight to the familiar small, square clapboard building. The bright yellow paint, she noticed as she parked and went in, was sadly in need of a touch-up.
Ernie Willett greeted his daughter with a scowl on his craggy face. In his world, this passed for affection. Sherri gave him a peck on the cheek, told him he needed a shave, and hel
ped herself to a candy bar from the display on the counter.
“That’ll be a dollar, missy. I’m not running a charity here.”
Sherri fished four quarters out of her pocket and handed them over. “Got a question for you.”
He sent her a suspicious look, eyebrows shooting up and dark eyes inquisitive.
“Any idea where I can find Kent Humphrey? I hear he works for you.”
“Boy’s not in trouble, is he?”
“Not that I know of.”
Her father’s breath came out in an exasperated huff. “It’s that girl he hangs out with, isn’t it? I told him to steer clear of her. Thinks he’s in love! What does a kid that age know about love?”
She could ask the same question of him, Sherri thought, but she was wise enough not to do so. At Kent and Amie’s age, he’d been head over heels for Margaret MacCrimmon. They’d broken up after high school. He’d married Sherri’s mother, Ida, and Margaret had become Margaret Boyd. Years later, when she was a widow and he was divorced, it had looked as if things between them might be heating up again, but that fire had apparently sputtered and gone out. They’d stopped keeping company a couple of years ago. Margaret now appeared to be more devoted to her dogs than to Ernie Willett.
“Dad, do you know where Kent is now? I really need to talk to him. I think he may have seen something last night . . . after Jason Graye was killed.”
If she’d hoped to shock her father into cooperating, she was doomed to disappointment. A dedicated curmudgeon like Ernie Willett was hard to rattle. He fiddled with the candy display, rearranging the three remaining chocolate bars before he finally offered an answer. “Might be he’s at the Highland Games.”
“Might be, or is?”
He shrugged. “Said something about going up there if I didn’t need him today. I told him to go ahead, as long as he came back before the end. Might be a few folks needing gas for the drive home.”
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll go see if I can find him.”
“You’d do better to wait till he comes back,” he called after her.
With a wave, she kept going, but she had reconsidered by the time she reached the police cruiser. Her father was right. For one thing, there was no guarantee Kent was at the games, even though he’d said that was where he was going. Even if he was there, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. She’d do better to wait a couple of hours. She could talk to him at the store, or wait until evening and catch him at home.
It was just as well she’d resigned herself to a delay. She’d barely turned the key in the ignition before she was called out to a rollover on Raglan Road, near the old Chadwick mansion.
* * *
When Liss took her second break of the day, it was to meet Jake Murch beneath the shade trees at one side of the hotel grounds. The area had been set aside as a venue for performances by the quieter musicians—harpists, fiddlers, and singers. Since it wasn’t far from the rows of booths, Liss had caught bits and pieces of the music throughout the day. A soprano she had heard earlier was almost through with her second show when Liss plunked herself down in the chair Murch had saved for her.
He held a finger to his lips. “Let the lady finish this song before we talk.”
Liss had no problem with that. She recognized the ballad instantly as “The Bonny Earl of Murray.” She was grinning by the time the singer took her bows and left the stage so that the next set of performers—a group of storytellers—could set up for their performance. Most of the audience left. A few newcomers took their places.
“What’s so funny?” Murch asked.
“Mondegreens.”
“What?”
“Mondegreens are misheard lyrics. The term came about because of the song we were just listening to. The real verse is ‘They hae slain the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green,’ but the story goes that the woman who coined the word heard that line as ‘They hae slain the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen’ and imagined the earl and the lady as lovers, dying together on the green. Such things are considered very romantic in some circles.”
“Okey-dokey. If you say so.”
“Yes. Well, that’s the story. And people do it all the time—hear something that just sounds like what was really said or sung. Then they put their own interpretation on it. I’ve done it myself.” She knew she had a sheepish look on her face when she added, “Blood on the cow.”
Murch raised his eyebrows in a question.
“I misheard the word plow in a song. I don’t even remember what one or who sang it, but that image—the cow, not the plow—was stuck in my head for days. Then, of course, there’s Richard Stans. He’s one of the lesser-known founding fathers, according to a local columnist here in Maine.”
Murch looked blank.
“Surely you’ve heard of him.” Liss bit back a giggle. “He’s in the Pledge of Allegiance. You know, ‘the flag of the United States of America, for Richard Stans?’”
With a groan, Murch indicated that he got it. Then, out of the blue, he said, “Don’t call me Shirley.”
Now it was Liss’s turn to be stumped. She sent him a puzzled look.
“Old joke from a movie. Surely heard as Shirley? Never mind. That’s not what you wanted to talk about.”
Liss stared at him, struck by a thought. “I’m not so sure of that. I know this is going to sound crazy, but is it possible you could have misheard what those two men were saying to each other in the town square?”
“The Shakespeare guys? Why?”
“Because I saw them again today and I had the strongest feeling that there was something . . . off about them. I told you it was crazy!”
“I never discount good instincts, and you’ve got them in spades. Turns out that one of those men is using a phony name. There’s no such person as Eliot Underhill, not in Roanoke, Virginia, anyway.”
“Then who is he?”
“Don’t know yet, but it makes me real suspicious of anything he does.”
“Is Martin Eldridge really Martin Eldridge?” Liss asked.
“That’s his real name, yes. I didn’t do any checking beyond that yet because there didn’t seem to be any connection to your missing persons.”
Liss told him about the tenuous Virginia connection.
“I’ll dig deeper,” he promised. “Meanwhile, let’s go back to what I heard . . . or what I thought I heard,” he corrected with a rueful grimace. “The one guy said ‘much ado about nothing’ and that’s the title of a play.”
“It’s also an expression, meaning someone’s making a lot of fuss for no good reason.”
“Okey-dokey. What about the reference to Elizabethan tragedy.”
Liss had closed her eyes, the better to call up the sound of the words. Her heart began to beat a little faster.
“Jake, could what you heard have been Elizabeth and Bradley? Those are Angie’s children’s names.” She never thought of Beth as Elizabeth, since no one ever called her that, but it stood to reason that Elizabeth was her given name.
“It’s a stretch, but maybe. What about the other play, Julius Caesar?”
“You only heard them say the second word, right? Seize her?”
“Damn. You could be right.”
As soon as he agreed with her, doubts flooded into Liss’s mind. “Or maybe I’m off in left field. Even if there’s something fishy about Eliot Underhill, Martin Eldridge is a respectable-looking guy, and he’s seventy if he’s a day. What on earth could he have to do with the disappearance of my friends?”
“We won’t know until I find out more. As for the one calling himself Underhill, I still think there’s something familiar about him.” He stood up. “I’ll—”
A piercing scream cut him off before he could complete his sentence.
Chapter Thirteen
By late afternoon, Sherri had returned to the police station and was wrapping up some of the endless record-keeping that went with the job of chief of police. The Highland Games wouldn’t wind down un
til six, so she didn’t see any point in looking for Kent at the Humphrey house until after that. Once she’d talked to him, she was looking forward to a quiet evening at home with her husband and kids. She was 99.9 percent certain that Kent hadn’t seen anything more than his girlfriend had.
She sat back in her swivel chair, rotating her neck and shoulders to get rid of the kinks. She was about to get up and pour herself another cup of coffee when Dolores Mayfield came barreling through the waiting room and straight into the office, face flushed and eyes shooting sparks. She was so agitated that her entire hand shook when she pointed one finger at Sherri.
“Good. You’re here. Stay right where you are. I want to file a complaint.”
Sherri gestured for the librarian to have a seat in the uncomfortable plastic guest chair. She saw no sign of blood. Not a hair on Dolores’s head was out of place. Whatever was bothering her, it didn’t appear to be a matter of life and death.
“What sort of complaint?”
“Harassment.” Dolores dropped into the chair, landing so hard that it gave a creak of protest.
Sherri bobbled the pen she’d just fished out of a drawer. “Harassment,” she repeated. “Do you mean sexual harassment?”
“Of course I don’t mean sexual harassment. Get your mind out of the gutter, young woman! I want you to do something to keep that man away from me. Get me a restraining order.”
Taking a firm grip on the pen, Sherri prepared to take notes. “Are you talking about a stalker?”
“Of course not.” Dolores sat up straighter and glared at Sherri, but she did not elucidate.
This is like pulling teeth, Sherri thought. She’d interrogated criminals who were more forthcoming. “Have you been threatened with bodily harm?”
“I have been threatened with incarceration!”
Finally, the penny dropped and Sherri’s pen along with it, this time deliberately. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dolores. Are you talking about Gordon Tandy?”
Kilt at the Highland Games Page 16
