Star Spangled Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “It’s a win-win situation,” he’d told her. “We get ’em mad and they write us letters which get more people mad so we get more letters.”

  Yeah, she thought bitterly, it was a win-win situation for the media, but a lose-lose situation for her family. The only thing that would end it would be the discovery of the real murderer. Then this supposed feud would be quickly forgotten. Yesterday’s news. The faster the better, she decided, resolving to do everything she could to speed the investigation along. Even if she had to solve the murder herself.

  But how was she going to do that, she wondered, when she got back to the house. Her home was under siege by the media and she was followed whenever she left. How could she possibly investigate if she couldn’t get out of the house?

  She was pondering this problem when the phone rang. It was Sue.

  “It’s so great to hear a friendly voice,” said Lucy, feeling as if Sue had thrown her a lifeline.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you see the news last night?”

  “I never watch the news. It’s depressing and it gives me frown lines. I figure I may not be wellinformed, but I’m saving a ton on Botox.”

  “Oh.” Sue’s attitude was a revelation to Lucy. “Really?”

  “Really. So what was on the news?”

  “Toby. They made him out like the prime suspect in Pru Pratt’s murder.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Sue.

  It was like a breath of fresh air to Lucy. “You don’t know how much it means to me to hear you say that.”

  “Right,” said Sue, not getting it. “Listen, I have to do some shopping today and I was wondering if you’d come along and help me.”

  “You need help shopping?” This time Lucy didn’t get it.

  “It’s not that kind of shopping,” said Sue. “I’m organizing a Fourth of July picnic and I need to buy paper plates and stuff like that. I’m going to that warehouse store. It’s a drive but I figure the savings are worth it. So, want to come along? I’ll buy you a hot dog for lunch.”

  “Uh, sure,” said Lucy. “But I’m kind of stuck in the house. There’s a bunch of reporters on the road and I don’t want to face them.”

  “No problem. I’ll pick you up. See you in ten.”

  Sue was as good as her word and came barreling up the drive minutes later in her huge black SUV. She was dressed for action in a jaunty baseball cap, black shades and a shorts outfit styled like a track suit. Her slender arms and legs were perfectly tanned and gleaming with moisturizer; all that work on the sun deck had paid off.

  When Lucy took her place in the passenger seat, well-protected by the rhino guard, she began to see the advantages of the gas-guzzling monster. For one thing, the rabble of reporters stood back respectfully as Sue made the turn onto the road. A few cars did attempt to follow them, but Sue quickly lost them by turning off the paved road onto one of the old logging roads that criss-crossed the region. Lucy hung on to the grab bar above the door for dear life as they bounced through ruts and pot holes.

  “Yee-ha!” yodeled Sue as they became momentarily airborne, going over one of the humps in the road Lucy called “thank-you-ma’ams.”

  They were definitely more fun when you were a kid, thought Lucy, and didn’t have to worry about the fillings in your teeth shaking loose. There was no sign of the followers, however, when they picked up the town road a few miles from the interstate.

  “This picnic sounds like a great idea. Who’s invited?” she asked.

  “The whole town.”

  “You’re kidding, right? I mean, that’s a whole lot of paper plates.”

  “I’m figuring on a thousand people.”

  “Wow,” said Lucy. “How are you paying for it?”

  “I talked to Marge and she got the parade committee to give me their money. If there’s no parade, they don’t need it, right?”

  “But what about the naturists?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “What if they come?”

  “I hope they do. The more the merrier,” said Sue.

  Maybe that old saying was right, thought Lucy. Ignorance was bliss. She knew entirely too much about the naturists, the environmentalists, the fishermen, the Revelation Congregation and others pushing the anti-nudity bylaw. In her view the town was splitting apart, driven by these warring factions. Sue, on the other hand, didn’t see the problem. The Fourth of July was days away and they had to have a celebration. If there couldn’t be a parade, and there couldn’t be fireworks, there was jolly well going to be a picnic. And if anyone could pull it off, it would be Sue.

  “So tell me, who do you think killed Pru?” asked Sue, swerving suddenly and accelerating up the ramp to the interstate.

  “My favorite suspect is Wesley,” said Lucy, checking that her seatbelt was fastened. “After all, he was driving hell for leather down the road when he hit Kudo.”

  “You mean he ran his mother down with the truck and fled the scene?” Sue was doubtful. “His own mother?”

  “I don’t think it was a happy family,” said Lucy, taking a peek at the speedometer. The needle was hovering around eighty. “The girls were over there and they heard Pru calling Wesley all sorts of bad names. And Wesley gave it right back.”

  “What were your girls doing visiting the Pratts?” Sue was rapidly gaining on a Mini Cooper, but couldn’t pass because a tractor-trailer truck was in the fast lane. She slammed on the brake and flashed her lights, but the driver of the Mini continued at a stately pace.

  “They were uninvited guests. They were upset about the dog hearing so they wanted to find evidence that Pru mistreated her chickens.”

  The tractor-trailer advanced and Sue shot into the passing lane, apparently oblivious to a second tractor-trailer that was making the same move. Now the SUV didn’t seem quite so large, sandwiched between the two trucks.

  “Ooh, they are their mother’s daughters, aren’t they?” The first truck moved into the traveling lane and Sue shot ahead.

  This time Lucy didn’t want to see the speedometer; she didn’t want to know how fast they were going. “Sometimes the end justifies the means,” she said, checking her seatbelt. “But in this case, I don’t think it helps. The cops say Pru died after ten and Wesley was long gone by then.”

  “I wouldn’t give up on him, yet,” said Sue, switching on the radio and searching for a station. “Those times of death are always pretty approximate, aren’t they?”

  A road sign warned of a steep incline ahead and urged reducing speed.

  “I’ll do the radio,” she offered, nervously. “You watch the road.”

  “Calm down, Lucy. If this baby can tame the Kalahari it can certainly handle the Maine Pike.”

  Sue had found her favorite oldies station and was tapping the steering wheel, singing along with the BeeGees. “Who else is on the list?”

  “Well, Cal, of course. Poor guy was probably the original hen-pecked husband.”

  “I know the husband’s always the first suspect, but Cal? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s afraid of his own shadow.”

  Sue was now weaving between lanes. Lucy wrapped her hand around the grab bar and tried to think of an appropriate prayer.

  “They’re the ones to watch out for,” said Lucy, deciding to say something. “Are we in a big hurry or something? You’re going awfully fast.”

  “It just seems like that,” said Sue, hitting the brakes to avoid slamming into a horse trailer. “I don’t know why they let these things on the road. And campers! Gosh, I hate those things! They’re supposed to be seeing the country, but I don’t think most of them ever get more than fifty miles from home, and it must take them two weeks considering how slow they go.”

  Well, she’d tried, thought Lucy, as Sue hit the accelerator and passed, only to swing abruptly onto the exit ramp.

  “There was no love lost between Pru and the naturists. I suppose one of them could have done her in,” speculated Lucy. “If they got rid o
f Pru they wouldn’t have to worry about the bylaw. Chances are it would die with her.”

  “Are you serious? They seem pretty peace-loving to me.”

  “I’m not saying they did it as a group or anything like that. All it takes is one loony, somebody who feels threatened by the bylaw. And then there’s the folks they attract. I’ve heard there have been some suspicious characters hanging around the pond.”

  “That’s just local prejudice,” exclaimed Sue, tapping the brake at the stop sign at the end of the exit ramp and zooming in front of a battered pickup truck. “Who else?”

  “I have a theory,” began Lucy. “You’ve heard about the lobster poaching, right? How everybody is convinced it’s Calvin and Wesley?”

  Sue nodded.

  “Well, I have noticed that Pru and Wesley look an awful lot alike, especially from behind. If one of the fishermen came to even things up with Wesley he might have gone after Pru by mistake.”

  “That makes sense to me,” said Sue, cutting off an oncoming station wagon and turning into the superstore parking lot. “Those fishermen have a code of their own when it comes to poaching. Whoever it was might have only wanted to scare Wesley, figuring he could jump out of the way, but Pru wasn’t so quick and agile. It could have been some sort of tragic mistake.”

  “You don’t like to admit that there could be a cold-blooded killer among us, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” Sue was cruising the lot, looking for a parking spot.

  “What about Mel Dunwoodie? The guy with the campground? He had a lot to lose financially if Pru’s bylaw went through. Maybe he did it.”

  “I don’t think so,” protested Sue, spotting a woman pushing a cart full of bags walking down one of the aisles between cars. Intent on her prey, she turned the SUV around and began a slow stalk.

  “I’m adding him to the list. So far we’ve got Wesley Pratt, Calvin Pratt, a crazed naturist, an angry lobsterman and Mel Dunwoodie. Anybody else?”

  “I can’t think of anyone,” said Sue, letting the car idle as she watched the woman load the shopping bags into her car. When she finished, she pushed the cart to one side and got in, taking her time starting the car. Sue drummed her fingers on the wheel impatiently.

  “Finally!” she exclaimed when the woman backed out at a speed roughly that of a fresh bottle of ketchup. “Could she move any slower?”

  When the car finally drove off, Sue hit the gas and promptly collided with the cart, which had rolled into the space.

  “Shit!”

  Lucy bit her lip and didn’t say anything.

  They’d just finished filling every inch of space inside the SUV with blocky cardboard boxes of paper goods and bags of red, white and blue party decorations when Sue suddenly asked, “What do we do now?”

  “Try to get home alive so we can do this all over again and unload the stuff,” said Lucy, pushing the cart back to the corral.

  “No, silly. I mean about the murder,” said Sue, following with the second cart. “How are you going to find out who did it?”

  “Start asking questions,” said Lucy, adding her cart to the line of linked carriages. “See what I can find out. I only wish there was some way I could find out more about the Pratt family. If they had some friends I could talk to them, but I don’t think they had any.”

  “Pru belonged to the Revelation Congregation,” said Sue, giving her cart a final little shove. “And so do my neighbors, the Wilsons. I could talk to them.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “You’ll have to pay me, though.”

  Trust Sue to extract her pound of flesh, thought Lucy. “Whatever you say.”

  “Ten pounds of potato salad, for the picnic.”

  “No problem.” Lucy considered. “You’ve told Ted, right?”

  “He’s giving it front page coverage.”

  “That’s good.” For a minute Lucy wished she was back at the Pennysaver, writing up the story.

  “His story won’t be half as good as what you would have written,” said Sue, patting her hand.

  “You’re right. He’s probably missing me like crazy.”

  As she said it, Lucy was aware that she was voicing her own thoughts, not Ted’s. She was already missing her job. She climbed up into the passenger seat and began fastening the seat belt. It didn’t seem quite adequate; she wanted something sturdier for the trip home, like the harnesses they used in stunt aircraft. An ejection seat would be nice, too.

  “Ready?” asked Sue, starting the engine and shifting into reverse.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” said Lucy, resigned to her fate.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lucy pondered her next move when Sue dropped her off at the house. Amazingly enough she was in one piece, but somewhat rattled by Sue’s aggressive driving. She took a couple of aspirin for her tension headache and stood at the kitchen sink, drinking a glass of water and watching the watchers.

  They were still there, which surprised her. You would think they would have something better to do than sit for hours in front of an empty house. Maybe, she thought, she could give them some help. Fearful that her Dutch courage would desert her, she placed her glass in the sink and marched out of the house and down the driveway, stopping at the road. Predictably, the reporters gathered around.

  “This is off the record,” she began, trying to ignore the cameras. “But I’m afraid you’re missing the big story.”

  Now that she was actually face-to-face with them, the reporters looked very young. They were probably rookies, assigned to watch the house while their more experienced colleagues were attending news conferences and interviewing officials.

  “What do you mean?” asked one, a freckle-faced kid with a crew cut.

  “Well, you know, Blueberry Pond is just a bit down the road.”

  “So? What’s Blueberry Pond?” This poor girl was camera-ready in a pastel polyester suit and Lucy knew she must be cooking in the heat.

  “Haven’t you heard about the nudists?” Lucy kept her voice neutral.

  “Nudists?”

  “Well, they prefer to be called naturists.” Lucy dangled the bait. They were nibbling, but would they bite?

  “Around here?” The kid with the crew cut was wary, sensing a trick.

  “At Blueberry Pond. Some days there are hundreds over there. Sunning themselves and swimming. It’s an official hot spot on the naturist Web site.”

  “That is interesting,” began the girl, “but what’s that got to do with the murder?”

  “Oh, didn’t you know? Prudence Pratt was very upset about all those naked people practically in her backyard. She was trying to get the town to pass an anti-nudity bylaw.”

  “At the very least it would be a photo op,” said the photographer.

  “And it might tie into the murder,” said the girl.

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot,” said the kid with the crew cut.

  “No problem,” said Lucy, turning and strolling up the driveway. She turned back to look when she reached the porch and saw that the little caravan was departing.

  Wasting no time she grabbed her purse and started the Subaru. Which way to go? She ran through her list of suspects and decided to head for the harbor, the scene of the most recent violence before the murder. She wanted to find out more about the lobster poaching and this was her chance, but only if the time and tide were right for the lobstermen to return to port.

  Her heart sank when she turned into the harbor parking lot and discovered nearly all the berths were empty. If everybody was out fishing there wouldn’t be anyone to talk to. Even the harbormaster’s little shack was shut tight, with a handwritten sign indicating he would be back in two hours. Lucy wandered from one end of the pier to the other, looking for signs of life. All she found were seagulls perched on pilings, waiting for the boats to return with their dinner of bait bits and fish scraps.

  She was about to give up when she heard a string of oaths, delivered by a gruff voice, coming from the R
eine Marie, Beetle Bickham’s boat. She went closer to investigate and noticed the hatch was open. She heard a series of clangs, followed by more profanity. Beetle was in the hold, working on his engine.

  “Hi, down there!” she yelled.

  “Hi, Lucy.” Beetle’s sweaty, red face appeared in the opening. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much,” she said, shrugging. “Do you have a minute to talk?”

  “Sure. I’ll be glad to take a break from this stubborn, hard-hearted old bitch of an engine. There’s Cokes in the cooler.”

  He pulled himself up easily through the hatch with his powerful arms, strong from years of raising heavy lobster traps from the deep, and seated himself beside her on the locker. Lucy handed him a frosty can and he popped the top, downing most of the contents in one gulp.

  “That is thirsty work.” He looked down ruefully at his grease-stained hands and shirt.

  “Sure is,” said Lucy, sipping her drink. “Have you missed many days of fishing?”

  “Naw. She just started acting up yesterday, when I was coming back in. And I made my quota anyway this week.”

  “Already?” Lucy was surprised since she’d heard that catches were low.

  Beetle shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah. It’s pretty good, much better than it was for a while there.”

  Lucy noticed that Calvin and Wesley’s boat, Second Chance, was tied up at the dock, too.

  “So you think the poachers have been busy with something else?”

  His black eyes twinkled. “That might just be it.”

  Lucy took another sip. “You know, I’ve been wondering if whoever killed Pru Pratt might have mistaken her for Wesley. From the back, they looked a lot alike, you know?”

  “She was a good woman, very religious, but not a womanly woman. You understand what I’m saying?” Beetle’s hands were in motion, this was a subject he felt strongly about. “I used to make a little joke about her, eh? I’d sing that old song about skin and bones and a hank of hair. That’s all she was.” He paused, perhaps thinking of his own amply endowed wife and his curvaceous daughters, who had all inherited his sparkling black eyes. “But I heard she was a good cook, especially her chicken fricassee.” He shook his head, pondering this incongruity.