Sinister Summer

by Colleen Gleason

“Yep.” Longbow scratched his head, then flattened the ruffled hair into a smooth sheen. “Shoulda gone with my gut. There were some faint bruises on one wrist, but they coulda been there awhile. Doc checked her over too, and said it was a heart attack. Coulda assumed too much there. He is getting up there in years.”

  “Smothered. She was smothered,” Diana said quietly.

  “What makes you think that?” asked Helga. “Specifically.”

  Diana felt the weight of her scrutiny, but plowed on. “I dreamt it. I dreamed I was her, being smothered, in her own bed.”

  Still looking at her, Helga nodded slowly. “All right.”

  “Only way to find out for sure is to order an autopsy. And don’t be expecting it to happen fast like it does on TV,” Longbow warned. “Especially not here in Wicks Hollow. We’re chump change compared to Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. It’ll take a month or more, I suspect.”

  “I know some people,” Diana said. “I might be able to pull some strings, make it happen more quickly. After all, we are talking about probable murder.”

  Murder.

  Aunt Jean was murdered.

  Though she still had to wait for proof, Diana no longer had any doubt.

  Longbow nodded. “I’ll—naw, Helga, you’re better at paperwork than I am. Helga’ll get the paperwork together for you.”

  “Thank God for small favors—you’re finally learning,” Helga told him, then she turned to Diana. “If he tries to do it, we’ll end up with a printer exploding, or the computer spontaneously combusting, or some other horror—and then I’ll end up wasting half a day trying to fix it. I swear, if anyone knows about hauntings and spectral energy, it’s me—because the captain here can’t walk by the damned copy room without messing everything up. He must have hated technology in a past life. Give me an hour to get that release together, all right, Ms. Iverson?”

  “We can grab lunch,” Ethan said before Diana could respond. “Thanks, Cap. Appreciate everything.”

  “Sure. Now I’ve got to get over and check out what’s going on at the Wicks Farm Clubhouse. Morrie Devine called and said someone let a slew of raccoons into the spa room.” He shoved on a wide-curly-brimmed cowboy hat decorated with the Wicks Hollow police insignia in front. “More likely, the coons found their way in all on their own.”

  “Or a ghost let them in,” Helga said with a grin. “After all, this is Wicks Hollow.”

  Ethan and Diana went to Trib’s for lunch and were seated at a table next to the removable glass wall. Because it was a gorgeous June day, the wall had been folded out of sight, leaving the restaurant wide open to the street side. A warm breeze tinged with the scent of Lake Michigan and summer flowers wafted over them, and the sounds of conversation from passersby and crying gulls filled the air.

  The tables were nearly full for lunch, but it was Thursday and in the middle of June—which was the beginning of high season. It would be like this, or worse, through the end of August, and still relatively busy during the latter part of September into early October for the fall color season.

  Ethan didn’t mind at all, for the busyness kept Trib too distracted for the amiable restaurateur to spend much time chatting with them. Normally, he wouldn’t mind—Trib was a nice guy and, fortunately, he understood the importance of a good selection of beers on tap—but Ethan didn’t want to be interrupted. He had things to talk about with Diana…and he wanted to enjoy her company.

  “That went far better than I expected,” Diana said as she set down her menu.

  Before Ethan could reply, the waitress came over to take their order. Once she left, he said, “We haven’t given much thought to why someone broke into Jean’s house.”

  “He—it was definitely a man. Or a tall, solid woman, I suppose,” Diana replied, tucking a curl behind her ear. Today she was wearing a pair of square ebony earrings that matched a chunky bracelet. She’d dressed professionally for their meeting with Joe Cap: in a business suit of black with wide cobalt blue trim and high-heeled shoes that showed off her legs.

  “My guess is that he—let’s stick with the male pronoun for now—was looking for something,” she concluded.

  “I agree. You haven’t noticed anything missing?”

  “Nothing obvious. It looked like the papers and drawers at Aunt Jean’s desk could have been messed with, but I can’t be certain, for the desk was always pretty disorganized. I haven’t even begun to look through her office and papers, so I hadn’t touched anything.” She played with her fork as she mused. “Aunt Jean’s jewelry box seemed undisturbed, and the few good pieces she had are still there—I have a list from her lawyer. A strand of pearls and a sapphire ring, plus a gold brooch with small diamonds. Not all that much to attract a thief.”

  “Someone got into the house twice—let’s just go with the assumption I was right that when you were in town that day, someone was in the house—”

  “Besides you,” she said, giving him an arch look.

  “Besides me. I’m guessing he hasn’t found what he was looking for yet, because he was still there when you got home. You surprised him, probably, when your headlights lit up the driveway.”

  “That’s a reasonable assumption.”

  “So if we can figure out what he was looking for, we might be able to come up with the who and the why.”

  “We?” Diana asked delicately as their beverages arrived. Her lips, glossed with that subtle iced pink, curved in a wry smile. “Are you suggesting we play homicide detective, Dr. Murphy?”

  The way she said his name—title and all—with that smirk and the teasing lilt to her voice took him by surprise and demonstrated yet another facet of the woman he’d once thought of as an ice queen. She was almost—almost—flirting with him.

  “Well, now that you mention it…” He smiled back with a burst of heat, and had the satisfaction of seeing the response flicker in her eyes: she definitely wasn’t immune to him.

  But she wasn’t available to him.

  Not while she still thought she loved Wertinger. His good mood soured.

  Their meals arrived just then, and Ethan was grateful for the disruption. If things were different—if she were unencumbered—he might feel differently. Even though it was clear Wertinger had cheated on her, that didn’t mean she would—or should—respond in quid pro quo.

  And he wouldn’t respect Diana if she did, even if it was with him—the single kiss he’d coaxed from her notwithstanding. He took full responsibility for tempting her into that. But anything else—on either of their parts—would constitute the adulterous behavior he despised. He didn’t wish that sort of pain and anguish on anyone. Even Jonathan Wertinger, who appeared to genuinely love Diana.

  By the time Ethan came out of his web of thoughts, he noticed that his companion had also fallen silent. And she was picking at her food—a large, appetizing salad with every color of the rainbow in vegetation, along with a side of house made crackers and a small pot of herb-flecked cheese to smear on them.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  She didn’t look at him right away, but toyed with her salad for a moment. Then she lifted her face and he saw pain and dismay there.

  “It’s just really hitting me—just now—that someone killed my aunt. Someone actually hated her enough, or wanted something badly enough, to take her life, Ethan. To kill a defenseless old woman in her bed.” Diana’s voice roughened and she shook her head. “Who would do something like that?”

  “A coward.”

  She nodded soberly. “Yes. A coward. Ethan, I’ve never experienced anything like this before—someone I loved being subjected to real violence. In this case, murder.”

  “It’s ugly,” he agreed quietly, and quelled the urge to reach over and touch her busy fingers. Probably not a good idea. “It’s the ugliest thing possible. It’s better that we know what happened, though, so the killer can be brought to justice, than to have gone on without a clue.”

  “Yes.” She smiled faintly and turned back to h
er food.

  He kept an eye on her as he worked through his meal—a salad with grilled salmon in a grainy, spicy-sweet mustard sauce like nothing he’d ever had before. He wanted to lick the plate. But his enjoyment was tempered by her grief, and his own anguish over the reality of Jean’s death.

  Diana was staring into space again when the waitress returned. The only part of her that seemed to have life was her dark hair: the breeze played with it, toying with a curl here, tossing a wisp into her face there. She jolted back to the moment when the waitress took her plate, and Ethan got caught staring at her.

  “You have such beautiful hair,” he said with a quick smile.

  She clapped a hand to her head, pushing the tousled mass flat, and looked at him as if he were crazy. “It’s always so out of control and messy. My mother used to say—well, never mind what she used to say. Suffice to say, I always think of it as my worst feature,” she added with a wry laugh. “But thanks for saying that.”

  “It’s definitely not your worst feature,” he said. “I think it’s one of your best features.”

  “Well, thank you. You might not feel the same way if you had to contend with such a wild mop,” she said with a little laugh.

  “Do you want to know what your worst feature really is?” Ethan said before he could think better of it.

  Diana went still, and he could see even her breathing stop. “What?” Her whole demeanor changed: walls went up, eyes went flat, body went stiff.

  Wow. Hit a soft spot there. But he wasn’t going to let it go.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Ethan told her, “your worst feature is Jonathan Wertinger.”

  Chapter Ten

  Diana and Ethan were walking back to the police station so she could sign the release papers when Maxine Took and her cane erupted from inside Orbra’s Tea House. She swung the heavy wooden stick down in front of them like the barrier at a railroad crossing, narrowly missing the couple who were walking in front of them.

  “What’s this I hear about Jean being murdered?” the old lady demanded, heedless of tourists along the sidewalk who might be taken aback by the talk of murder in sweet Wicks Hollow. “Now you come right in here and tell us all about it. Both of you.”

  “Sounds like you already know,” Ethan muttered, but he did as she demanded.

  “How on earth could she hear about it already?” Diana said in an undertone as she reluctantly stepped inside the tea shop.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” he replied. “It’s uncanny—she always knows. Everything. It’s like she’s got a crystal ball or something. Hi Orbra,” he said, then leaned in to give the tall woman a kiss on her powdered cheek. “We just came from Trib’s but didn’t have dessert because we were saving ourselves for your scones. The frosted ones.”

  Diana noticed that Maxine’s chair—the same one she’d sat in before, at the front table—was on its side, as if the woman had bolted from it with enough force to knock it over. The old termagant had probably seen them coming down the street.

  Iva and Juanita (along with Bruce Banner, peeking up from inside his tote-bag) were sitting at the table as well with the remnants of tea, English biscuits, muffins, and quiche crusts around them. There was a deluxe Scrabble board in the center with a game in play.

  “Sit there,” Maxine said, pointing at two empty seats. “Cherry’s got one of them vine-yessa classes on right now, so her chair’s empty. Don’t bump the board,” she screeched before Diana even got close to the table. “I got a bingo I’m ready to play when we’re done here, and I don’t want Juanita getting any ideas about calling the game off because the tiles got knocked around.” She gave her friend a steely look.

  “You’re the only one who does that,” Juanita replied primly. Today, her fingernails were lavender and she wore a maxi dress of the exact same color. They both clashed wildly with her candy-apple red poof of hair.

  “I never—”

  “Ay-yi-yi, Maxine—you do it when you think I’m not looking. She can’t stand it that I’ve got a 1500 ranking and she’s only got a 1485,” Juanita told them with a satisfied smile.

  “Lies. All of them. Lies.” Maxine looked at Diana and Ethan as if challenging them to side with Juanita. “Now tell us about they’re digging up Jean. To find out if she was murdered?”

  “I told you she was going to haunt that house,” Iva said wisely. She held a delicate white cup filled with steaming tea, eyes fastened expectantly on Diana. “Didn’t expect it to be because she was murdered, but that’s a better reason than just not wanting to leave the party and going on to the afterlife. Not that she was murdered, you understand—but the reason she’s hanging around. To settle the score, to right the wrong, to bring justice to bear.”

  Diana looked at Ethan, who shrugged as if to say, Just go with it.

  “Did you want some tea, honey?” asked Orbra. There was a bit of a challenge to her tone, and Diana figured she was remembering her faux pas from last time.

  “I would love some tea,” she said, infusing enthusiasm in her voice. “Do you have something you recommend? What about a chai?” That was close to coffee, wasn’t it?

  Orbra seemed content with that response. “With or without milk? You add your own sweetener.”

  “With milk,” Ethan said in a stage whisper. “It’s good that way.”

  Diana nodded. “All right. With milk. Skim.”

  “Two-percent,” corrected the proprietress. “Skim’s hardly any better than adding water or that almond milk Cherry makes me put in hers.”

  “Right, two-percent.”

  By the time the orders were figured out—of course Maxine had demands to renew, and Ethan, who seemed to have two hollow legs, ordered an entire spread of scones, biscuits, tiny sandwiches, and fruit—Diana had had the opportunity to consider the situation.

  What exactly should she tell the ladies about Aunt Jean’s death? Clearly the idea of a ghost didn’t faze them, but how much detail did they need to have—and how little would Maxine allow her to get away with giving?

  As it turned out, Diana didn’t have to decide, because Maxine and her cohorts seemed to know about everything already—from the plan to order an exhumation and autopsy, to Helga’s experience with the blinking lights on the night of the party, to the fact that the house had been broken into at least once. Probably twice.

  Once Maxine had finished badgering Diana with all of her knowledge, Iva was able to get a word in. “Who do you think would do such a thing to Jean?” Her voice and expression were uncharacteristically sober, and astonishingly, Maxine’s demeanor changed to match hers as well.

  “Whoever it was deserves to be hung by his balls,” the older woman said in a flat, business-like tone—so different from her usual strident, ear-splitting one. “Hurting Jean like that. If I could, I’d put a curse on—”

  “Now don’t be saying things like that, Maxine,” Orbra said loudly, looking nervously at a table of customers nearby. She set down a rosebud teapot in front of Diana, and another one with yellow daisies in front of Ethan, then followed with pitchers of milk and dishes of brown sugar lumps. “There’s enough gossip about you being a witch as it is,” she hissed at Maxine.

  “Gossip?” Juanita said, slapping her hand against her bag so the little dog jolted. “It’s not gossip if it’s true.” She giggled merrily, and Orbra rolled her eyes.

  When she looked over and saw Diana’s expression, the Dutch woman immediately moved to soothe. “It’s a standing joke; don’t look so serious about it, Diana. The only type of witch Maxine is is the kind that grumbles and grouses about every thing.”

  “Believe me, if Maxine was a witch, she’d never allow me to beat her in Scrabble,” Juanita said archly.

  “You only win because you—”

  “I’ve been saying a rosary every day for Jean, but now I’m going to say two. I’m thinking of asking St. Anthony for intervention,” Juanita announced.

  “St. Anthony?” Ethan asked, looking u
p from the crumbly orange lavender scone he was devouring. A tiny flake of the glaze from it was caught at the corner of his mouth, and Diana was very glad she caught herself before she reached over to brush it away.

  “Anthony’s the patron saint when you want help to find something,” Juanita told him, fiddling with the Crucifix she wore on a chain around her neck. “You say ‘Tony, Tony, look around, there’s something lost that can’t be found.’ We want to find Jean’s murderer, don’t we?”

  “I’ll say we do.” Maxine seemed to like that idea. “St. Anthony, hmm? All right. Maybe you Catholics got something we Baptists don’t.” She nodded. “I’ll get working on that. Tony, Tony,” she muttered. “Look around…”

  “Ladies,” Ethan said suddenly. “If someone—er—did away with Jean, and has been breaking into the house, they probably would have been seen here in town at some point. Have you noticed any strangers—”

  “Dearest Ethan, we get strangers in Wicks Hollow all the time,” Iva said, patting his hand.

  “Overrun by them from June to September,” Maxine grumbled. “Used to like summer, after school got out, but now it’s people every where you look. Always underfoot, and—”

  “But my aunt died in late May,” said Diana, seizing the conversation before Maxine was off to the races. “So you might have noticed a stranger then, before all the tourists come. And maybe you saw the same person in the last week or two also, since I got here…and the break-ins started.”

  All at once it occurred to her that her arrival seemed to have sparked the break-ins. She looked at Ethan and from his expression realized he’d just come to the same conclusion. Diana found this silent meeting of the minds both comforting and surprising. But the fact that she might have been the catalyst for the person sneaking in and out of Jean’s house was worrisome.

  Why now? Why her?

  Or was the timing just a coincidence?

  “We get small business conferences and golf outings in April and May before Memorial Day,” Iva was saying. “That’s how I met Hollis, you know. But those are groups, and they’re usually planned and scheduled far in advance, so it seems like someone who killed Jean wouldn’t be in a group like that.”