Saints & Strangers (A Sam Warren Mystery)

by Richelle Elberg

  Dennis clutched my elbow and marched me away from the crowd.

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Soaking up some local culture?”

  “Sam! This ain’t a joke; we got a body down there. Get your ass out of here.”

  “But Dennis, I can help! Take me to the crime scene with you.”

  “No fucking way. This is a police matter, Sam, you know that.”

  “Dennis, you know I have certain…skills. Let me work this with you.”

  In the past Dennis had occasionally given me ‘research’ projects on the sly, usually when he was trying to nail a particularly slick suspect. But he’d never involved me in anything this serious.

  “And lose my job? Get kicked back to patrol? Sam, it’s a murder, for fuck sake.”

  “I know, I know, but you know I can get twice as much info in a fraction of the time that it’ll take you and Turk pounding the pavement. You know I can.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, I know you can. I also know I should arrest you for what you do to get your info.”

  “Come on, Dennis!”

  He shook his head. “I’m not taking you to the scene and you need to get the hell out of here, Sam.” He lowered his voice. “But if you happen to be out for a drink tonight, say you just happen to be at the Trap, around ten, then you might just happen to overhear a few details about the case. You might get a look at a few photos.”

  “Right!” I was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Might, Sam. Depending on where this thing goes, I may not even make it.”

  “Okay, okay, fair enough. I’ll start on my research.”

  Dennis snorted. “That what you call it?”

  He nodded at the uniform who’d just told all my new friends to go home.

  “You too, Sam. Outta here.”

  He turned and hurried down the path.

  I climbed the wooden stairs back to the parking lot and meandered toward the employee lot. I studied the surroundings. Except for the paved parking area, the landscape was hilly and densely forested. And not fenced in.

  I knew the history of Plimoth Plantation; I’d come here on countless field trips as a kid. In 1955 Hattie Hornblower (I swear, that was her name) bequeathed 140 acres of land on the north bank of the Eel River to Plimoth Plantation, Inc., which was established to create an open-air museum. There was a Wampanoag settlement and an English Village where “interpreters” in Seventeenth Century dress interacted with tourists and school children. They grew crops, chopped wood, cooked over fires and tended to livestock. It was considered one of the most authentic open air museums in the world.

  The museum was a huge tourist draw for Plymouth and with Thanksgiving less than two months away, I was pretty sure the town elders wouldn’t welcome any negative publicity. Murder’s pretty high on the negativity scale; they’d want an arrest ASAP.

  As I reached the far side of the lot, a big guy sitting in a minivan called out to me. “Hey, you a reporter?”

  “Umm, sort of?”

  “Cuz I work here. I’m part Indian; I work in the Wampanoag home site. I can tell you some stories, for background.”

  The guy was huge, maybe 350 pounds. He was wearing a red beret and had long thin grey braids coming down on both sides of his fleshy face. His dark eyes were intense. Except for the eyes he looked nothing like an Indian, but I decided to go with it.

  “What kind of stories?”

  He lowered his voice as I approached.

  “This place is filled with spirits. Loaded. You can hear them at night; I’ve heard them myself. Many times. Some people have seen them, but I was baptized when I was two.” He sighed heavily. “Closed my third eye.”

  He looked at my blank face and shrugged. “It’s an Indian thing.”

  “Spirits? Are you saying these spirits had something to do with the murder in there?”

  He blinked. “What are you, stupid?”

  I blushed. “No, I am not stupid. What about these spirits?”

  “I just think people should know, if you’re writing a story on this, if you’re doing any background research at all. You need to make sure and tell the whole story, including the Native American side. And there are spirits here of the Wampanoag that were wiped out by English disease.”

  “Go on.” In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “Even before the Pilgrims landed, and they weren’t called Pilgrims then, by the way, English fisherman came to these shores. Up in Maine a disease spread among the natives and it worked its way down the coast. Something with the liver, they think; the White Devil hasn’t been real good for Native American livers. Anyway, the illness was very painful and made them hot, so the sick ones would go lie in the Eel River. And they would moan in agony.”

  He lowered his voice further. “I’ve had reason to be there at night, down by the outlet to the harbor. I’ve heard the moaning.”

  “But these spirits don’t have anything to do with someone getting murdered in the English Village?”

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “You ask me, that’s just another crazy white man who lost it.”

  I nodded. He was probably right about that.

  “Anyway, gotta go, I’m getting a satellite dish installed. Ciao.” He closed his window, cranked the engine and pulled out of the parking lot.

  Okaaayy. That was weird. But I committed the guy’s plate to memory, just in case.

  Ciao?

  Chapter 3

  Back home I buzzed around my living room. I cleaned the white board that hung behind my desk and pulled all of my bills and personal photographs off my bulletin board. I brewed coffee. I thought about buying some cigarettes, but I don’t smoke. Probably a bad idea to start. Scratch the cigarettes.

  Ten minutes later I sat down with a steaming mug of coffee, my nerves tingling. I rolled my head around and cracked my knuckles. I got out a clean legal pad and dug around until I found my favorite pen. Then I laid into my keyboard.

  First I hit the Plymouth PD. Technically, this didn’t even require hacking; I’d figured out Dennis’ password months ago. But, as expected, there was very little in the system yet. I wouldn’t be able to research the victim until they figured out who it was. With luck Dennis could tell me tonight at the Trap. An autopsy might take another day, although I was pretty sure they would rush it, given the sensational nature of the crime.

  I switched over to the company that handles 911 calls for Plymouth County. About ten minutes later I was in. I found the recording from that morning’s call and listened.

  “911, please state your location.”

  “This is…Plimoth Plantation is the location. 137 Warren Avenue. In the John Billington House.”

  “What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Um, we have…there’s a...woman…a woman’s body in one of our buildings. She’s hanging from a beam. I mean she was hanged.”

  “Please stay on the line. I’m dispatching police and emergency personnel….Is the victim still alive? Has she been cut down? Can you tell if she’s breathing?”

  “No, no, she’s dead. She’s….stiff. She was tied up. There’s duct tape around her mouth. She’s still hanging where she was found.”

  “OK, stay on the line with me please. Officers and EMTs are on the way. Who am I speaking with?”

  “This is Elizabeth Smit. I’m the Executive Director of Plimoth Plantation.”

  “And how long has it been since you discovered the body, Ms. Smit?”

  “Mrs. Smit. Um, one of my actors called me on my cell about ten minutes ago. John Clarkson. I was nearly here. I told John to wait for me before doing anything.”

  “So, the actor discovered the body ten minutes ago?”

  “Yes. He called me on his cell phone.”

  “Can you hear the police yet, ma’am?”

  “No…uh, yes, yes, I hear sirens now.”

  “OK, just stay with me until the police arrive. Did John say if the woman was definitely dead when he
called you, Ms. Smit?”

  “Missus Smit.”

  “Uh, Mrs. Smit. Was he sure the woman was dead when he called you?”

  “Yes! There’s a message. In an envelope. John opened it. It says ‘In the name of God, Amen.’ Don’t you see? She was murdered!”

  “Mrs. Smit, please stay calm. Have you seen anyone strange in the area? Anyone that doesn’t belong? Are you and your staff in a secure location?”

  “I…uh, I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone strange. I’m in my office. I sent the staff and the visitors up by the parking lot, near the Welcome Center. We open at nine; there were already some guests here, I mean tourists, when the body was found.”

  “Okay, ma’am, can you move back to the area with the other employees until an officer arrives? I’m going to stay on the line with you.”

  “Um, okay. I hear more sirens.”

  “Okay ma’am, I want you to go outside now and meet the policeman and take him to the body. All right? I’m going to hang up now, okay?”

  “Is this call going to be made public?”

  “Ma’am, please go outside now and stay with the officer.”

  “Yes, fine. Okay.” The line went dead.

  I listened to the recording twice more and transcribed the call. I read it through until I had it memorized.

  I made some notes. Elizabeth Smit, Plimoth Plantation Executive Director. John Clarkson, actor. Marty Somebody, who’d spoken to John after he found the body. Melissa Somebody, who was doing John….Who else?

  I got back on the computer, hacked into the DMV and found the fat Indian in the minivan, the guy who lost his third eye when he was baptized. Robert Hopkins. Injun Bob? I wrote down his address.

  I decided to work my way through the Plimoth Plantation employees next. Fifteen minutes later I was surfing the company intranet. For the next few hours I trolled every subdirectory. I learned schedules and read performance reviews. I got names and addresses. I read emails and culled the financial statements. Finally, I logged out and leaned back.

  I had a handful of names to examine; some because they seemed discontent in their position, others because they were new. Marty Atherton was hired in early September, just four weeks ago, and he’d apparently been there just after Clarkson found the body. Returning to the scene of the crime?

  The financial director, Aaron Stevens, also caught my eye. Revenue at the Plantation in the first half was under budget and he and Smit had exchanged numerous terse messages. In the latest, Stevens suggested that “perhaps someone more talented—or less scrupulous—could serve the numbers up to the board in a more palatable way.” He might be scrupulous, but he also sounded quite angry.

  And then there was John Clarkson. He’d been reprimanded for turning up late, and Smit, more than once, voiced suspicions to her colleagues that Clarkson was drinking on the job. He’d been there for more than a decade and played John Billington, one of the character roles in the English Village. Smit’s last email about Clarkson indicated that he would be fired right after Thanksgiving. Could he know?

  I made a note to print out their DMV records and then moved on to the message left with the body. Dennis and the forensics guys would be working on the paper, the envelope, the ink and prints. But what about the message?

  “In the name of God, Amen.” Pretty generic, but I was assuming that Plimoth Plantation wasn’t chosen at random. The victim was probably hanged there for a reason. I fired up Google.

  The first reference I found was in the Mayflower Compact. “In the name of God, Amen,” was the opening line of the famous document drawn up by the forty-one men who crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower and landed at Cape Cod in November of 1620. The Mayflower Compact was considered by some to be a precursor to our American Constitution and to democratic rule in general. For a hanging at Plimoth Plantation, this seemed like the most obvious source for the message left with the body.

  I printed out the text of the Compact and continued checking for other references. “In the name of God, Amen” was used in the body of a lot of wills that for some reason had been transcribed and uploaded to the Internet. Some dated back hundreds of years. After reading a couple, I decided that the wills were probably a dead end, so to speak, and there were too many of them anyway.

  The other reference that bobbed to the surface was a book entitled In the Name of God, Amen, by a Daniel J. Ford. The sub-title was “Rediscovering Biblical and Historical Covenants.” One gushing reviewer gave a mile long homage to the book. A few quotes stood out:

  “The history of the world, of nations, and individuals can only be understood in terms of those who kept covenant with God, and those who did not… Never before in our history have American lawmakers, pastors, and students been more ignorant of who they are and how they got here….there is little time to remedy this problem…It must begin with the people of God. We must embrace these truths and argue the case on behalf of generations yet to be born.”

  The hair stood up on my arms. Would the people of God try to remedy the problem with murder? Pro-lifers had been doing it for years. The book was offered on a website run by Sight Ministries, which promoted “Discipleship & Scholarship for the America Christian Family.” The book was also available on Amazon.

  I looked up Daniel J. Ford. He had another book, The Legacy of Liberty and Property in the Story of American Colonization and the Founding of a Nation. Sounded more historical than religious. Also, incredibly boring. I found his bio. He lived in St. Louis and was a collector of historical documents.

  I went back to the Sight Ministries page. In addition to offering religious and home-school texts as well as educational toys for sale, the site offered a blog, written by the same man who’d given his glowing review of Ford’s book. His most recent post was a defense of David Barton, a questionable religious historian who’d recently come under fire after a book he authored, The Jefferson Lies, was pulled by the publisher due to inaccuracies. I clicked around some more until I found the blogger’s name. Charles Prescott Smit. He lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts and was married to Elizabeth Jane Smit.

  Chapter 4

  It was going on eight when I shut down my laptop. I pinned a bunch of printouts to the bulletin board and jotted several notes on the white board. I stood back and looked it over with satisfaction. My very first murder board. Hot dog!

  I scarfed down my last microwave burrito, twisted the frizz up in a clip, and pulled on my favorite jeans with a tank-top and another of my dad’s hoodies. Sandals and hot pink toenails were my only concession to femininity—a girl’s feet can tell you a lot, especially if she has a thing for her dead dad’s old sweatshirts. I tucked my 9 mm in the small of my back. I probably wouldn’t need it at the Trap, but I was working, sort of, so I took it.

  I had my head down and was lost in thought as I walked out to my car, when someone grabbed my shoulder. Pulling my nine, I spun around.

  “Jeeeesus, Mrs. Trimble! You gotta stop sneaking up on me.”

  “Well, Sam, maybe you shouldn’t have a firearm. You’re awfully jumpy with that thing. Now put that away. I want to ask you about the murder at Plimoth Plantation. With all your cop friends, you must know some details. So, what aren’t they telling us?”

  She stood there, all five feet of her, in her pink calico housecoat and green flip-flops, tapping her toes. She was obviously braless. I made a mental note to shoot myself if my boobs ever descended below my belly button.

  When I didn’t reply she narrowed her eyes. Behind her coke bottle lenses, they nearly disappeared.

  “Don’t you hold out on me.”

  “Mrs. Trimble, I’m a private investigator, I don’t get involved in police cases. I follow cheating husbands around and get their wives good alimony.” I had my fingers crossed behind my back. “You should talk to Jenna Jones down the street. Lenny’s a cop, remember?”

  Mrs. Trimble pursed her lips.

  “Your mother was a cop. Your father was a cop. Your father’s best frien
d is still a cop. Chief Hastings is your godfather. You expect me to believe that you haven’t spoken to anyone about this murder? Where’d you rush off to this morning in such a hurry? I didn’t just fall off the potato wagon, Sam.”

  Maybe I should have Mrs. Trimble on my payroll. If I ever had enough work to hire help, she’d be a real asset.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Trimble. And I’m sorry I pulled my gun on you. Again… But I’ve got to get going.”

  Did I lock the back door? I could just see her going in and studying all my notes and printouts. Handing out copies up and down Taylor Avenue.

  “Where are you going now? It’s nearly nine o’clock.”

  “I…have a date. And I don’t want to be late, so…”

  She burst out laughing.

  “Sam Warren, you haven’t had a date in two years. Really, what do you take me for?” She was still laughing as she walked back through her front door. “A date…”

  Everyone’s a comedian. I went back inside, made sure the back door was locked and left.

  Twenty minutes later I turned into the parking lot at the Trap and slid the Mini in between a newer Harley and a beat up Ford pickup. I checked my face in the rear view mirror, picked at the frizz, grabbed my backpack and jumped out of the car.

  The Lobster Trap Tavern is a local institution on the edge of town with a rundown look and clientele. Its darkened cedar shingles are framed by peeling red trim; a handful of mildewed lobster buoys hang across the front. Tall weeds grow around the walkway and matching dead geraniums bracket the front door. The occasional lost tourist might venture into the Trap, but they seldom stay. There’s no wine that any educated nose would accept and the Trap’s owner Jimmy didn’t seem to notice when the No Smoking law was passed eight years ago. No one pointed it out to him either.