Stay Calm and Collie On

by Lane Stone

“I have to get to the station. Mary Jane Kerwin is coming in to give a signed statement. I wanted to stop by here first,” he said.

  “She confessed?” Lady Anthea gasped.

  I knew in my bones that wasn’t what he was here to tell me, so I felt the letdown a beat earlier. That woman was tough and wasn’t about to burst into tears and tell all like the end of a Murder She Wrote episode.

  Chief Turner shook his head, no. “I bet she will soon. I have something almost as good to tell you. We found Henry’s shirt and knife in the drain to her outdoor shower.”

  “That’s where she hid it! It has to be her. She wanted the money from the sale of the next painting all for herself,” Lady Anthea said, clasping her hands together. “She had to know that after you discovered she and Henry knew one another, you would learn about their dodgy business dealings.”

  “It would have been put in there in the last twenty-four hours.” Had I just said that out loud? Lady Anthea and Chief Turner’s heads pivoted to me. I had.

  “How would you know that?” Chief Turner was no longer standing in the doorway. He was closing the distance between us.

  “I was there yesterday and I saw her outdoor shower. It was draining fine,” I said.

  “Now you’re a plumber?” he asked.

  Lady Anthea was making a sound like she wanted to interrupt, but I plowed on. “Can we talk about this later?” By later I meant never.

  He looked at his watch, then spun around and was gone.

  Lady Anthea took a deep breath and returned to the sofa. After we heard the doors swish open, then closed, she said, “I remember now. When you accidently turned the water on, it didn’t pool around our shoes, did it?”

  “No, it drained just fine.”

  “Why did you make it sound like you were alone in that woman’s shower stall? You didn’t have to do that,” Lady Anthea said.

  “I think I did. I know your real life is in England. Any day now you might need to go back to salvage that life.” I pointed to the door. “He might be able to stop you from leaving the country if you get any more mixed up in this murder.”

  She looked over my shoulder out the window behind me. The play area on that side of the building was rarely used, but we had it if it was needed. Which it hadn’t been since Monday.

  “Remember when I asked you why Americans did unnecessary things?” she asked.

  “Like putting pumpkin flavor in coffee?” I offered.

  “And you said it was because you could. Why do people have outdoor showers? Just pick up the garden hose if you need to wash sand off your feet, for heaven’s sake. Are they used?”

  “Both Mary Jane Kerwin and Dayle Thomas live within walking distance of the bay. They probably do use theirs after walking on the beach,” I said.

  She sighed. “Hopefully, Chief Turner will be able to charge Ms. Kerwin with the murder after he interrogates her. It wasn’t a coincidence that after we talked to her the T-shirt and knife appeared in the drain of her shower.” She rubbed her forehead, back and forth. “We’ve learned a lot since Monday night. I have to believe we are extremely close to figuring this out. Now, hopefully, the police will have a spot of luck and Mary Jane Kerwin will be arrested this afternoon.”

  “What if it wasn’t her?” I asked.

  Lady Anthea groaned.

  “We’ve been disappointed before. Remember, Dr. Walton? All three of us were sure he would be charged,” I said. “She had a good thing going.”

  “Yes, it was quite lucrative and I think she was afraid Ashley might become Henry’s new business partner.”

  My phone pinged that I had a text. “This is from Chief Turner.” I read the message: She’s lawyering up. Says somebody put the shirt in drain to frame her & full day of security footage will show her at gallery. May not be able to bring charges YET.

  I put the phone down. “Remember she said she usually worked afternoons but since Collins was away she had come in early? Now she says she was there all day.”

  “I was so sure this was going to be the end of it,” Lady Anthea said.

  “Let’s list what we know,” I said. “First, let’s get Shelby in here.”

  The lobby sounded quiet, and Dana was still behind the counter, so I went out and requested Shelby’s presence.

  She came in and sat on the sofa next to Lady Anthea. I paced the length of my office in the style of Hercule Poirot. It got his little gray cells going. Maybe it would do the same for me. “Mary Jane Kerwin is saying the store’s security cameras are going to prove she was at the Best of the Past most of the day on Monday. Chief Turner’s going to need more on her to place her under arrest. We were about to run down what we’ve learned so far. Tell us what we’re missing.”

  “I’m ready. Fire away,” Shelby said.

  “Henry dropped Dottie off. Someone stole Dayle’s sleeping pills and put them in Henry’s water bottle.”

  “Are we 100 percent sure Dayle didn’t poison him herself?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “What motive would she have? And why would she mention the missing sleeping pills at all if she killed him?” I asked. She nodded and I went on. “Dayle Thomas was getting chemo Monday afternoon. The person who stole the sleeping pills broke into her house, which would not have been difficult since she left her door unlocked.”

  I looked over to see a slight smile on Lady Anthea’s face, prompting me to ask, “Do you leave the doors at Frithsden open?”

  “We lock them now,” she said with a smile that told me she was reminiscing. “My parents had a number of live-in servants when I was a girl and so the doors were only locked at night. I have never felt as safe as I did then. I was constantly surrounded by people who knew me.”

  I paused and then got back to our timeline. “Henry climbed into the back of the van, where he was stabbed,” I said. I replayed in my head the way his body had looked. “His shoes were spotless. He wasn’t killed somewhere else then dragged to the van. That tracks with what Chief Turner said about where the stabbing took place. But where?” I asked anyone and everyone. “Where was the van when Henry climbed into the back?”

  Lady Anthea and Shelby looked at me like it had been a rhetorical question, but it hadn’t been.

  When Shelby realized I didn’t have an answer, she spoke. “We know the van had been at the Roosevelt Inlet, but the gravel in the tires probably got there during their adult-only fun and games.”

  I returned to my desk and opened my notebook. “I’ll list that as our first unknown—where was the van?”

  Lady Anthea took the story from there. “We know that Ashley Trent, fiancée and girlfriend number one, suspected he was dating someone here. Mary Jane Kerwin, girlfriend number two, had just learned about Ashley. She and Henry knew each other in Albany. I think we can safely say she asked him to come to Lewes since they immediately started cheating her boss. They paid him a small amount for a very valuable painting, then sold it.”

  “Wouldn’t Peter Collins be a suspect, since he was the one being cheated?” I asked.

  “Remember, we considered that. We don’t know if he was aware he was being defrauded. Plus, he has an alibi,” Lady Anthea said.

  “Mary Jane Kerwin seems like the kind of person who would want the whole pie, not half,” Shelby said.

  “She could have dispatched poor Henry, driven the van to the line of cars queued for the ferry, and walked home,” Lady Anthea said. She stopped speaking and pointed at me. “Along the beach, like you said. She has an outdoor shower that she uses after she returns home from the beach.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said

  “Henry would get in the back of the van for her,” Shelby said. “From what Rick said, and from his email to Henry, it sounded like it was a common occurrence.”

  The three of us looked at each other, we had all covered our mouths with our hands.

 
“Is it just me, or are you two thinking about them having sex in between the dog crates, with So-Long, Robber, and Paris watching?” I asked, incredulous. “It’s a good thing dogs can’t talk! Can you imagine So-Long reporting that to Charles Andrews?”

  “That’s just wrong,” Shelby said.

  “I should say so,” Lady Anthea said, her disgust evident.

  “Wait,” I said. “It is wrong. Remember the amount of sleeping pills Henry had in his system? He wouldn’t be able to perform, would he?”

  “But he would still get in the back of the van for her, I’m sure,” Shelby insisted.

  Lady Anthea nodded in agreement. “I doubt anyone is trying to frame her.”

  “That’s a little too pat, isn’t it?” I asked.

  Lady Anthea continued, “From what I saw of her, it’s much more likely that she killed Henry because she was afraid he was going to stop their business arrangement or because she wanted all the money. Then she hid the shirt and knife in her drain before the police could get there.”

  I saw how it could have happened, step by step, just like Lady Anthea had laid out. My phone rang and I jumped out of my chair. “Hello, Chief Turner.”

  “Do you want to hear the latest?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m with Shelby and Lady Anthea. I’ll put you on speaker.”

  “I was able to get a search warrant and a crime scene team is heading over from Wilmington. We’ll be looking for blood traces inside the house. That should knock her claim that someone else put the shirt and knife there out of the water. That’s the good news.”

  He could have stopped right before that last sentence.

  “What’s the bad?’

  “The knife doesn’t match the set in her kitchen. Do people have knives that don’t match?” he asked.

  I looked at my fellow investigators.

  “Sure,” Shelby said.

  “We all have one offs,” Lady Anthea said.

  “So the bad news wasn’t so bad. The knife could still belong to her. Is that Lady Anthea I hear?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “She swears up and down that you’re wrong about the paintings at the Best of the Past being valuable. Are you sure of that?”

  She drew herself up in indignation. “I most certainly am.”

  “Good. That’s what I thought. She’s blaming being brought in for questioning on you.”

  “Don’t take our word for it. We can send you the information on what the first painting sold for. I’ll have Dana email it to you. She found it on the internet,” I said.

  “Technology saves the day again,” he gloated. “We should be able to get the fingerprints off the knife in a day or so. I’ll be in touch,” Chief Turner said and was gone.

  “A day or so will be too late. The gala is tomorrow night!” Lady Anthea said toward the phone.

  “He already hung up,” Shelby said, giving her shoulder a pat. “You’re right, it very well could be too late. We have some pet parents, like Betsy Rivard and Dayle Thomas, saying they will definitely be there, but we have way too many still thinking about it. People who a lot of others take their cue from, like Charles Andrews and Kate Carter. Tomorrow night could go either way.”

  This was the first time Shelby had voiced her frustration. I shouldn’t have been surprised since Jeffrey and most of their friends came from the finance world. They had lived in a condo on Wall Street. She had profit versus loss, good investment versus bad investment in her DNA.

  “If, however, the killer was arrested in time for the story to make the online version of the newspaper, we’d be back to our original attendance level,” Shelby continued.

  Lady Anthea creased her brow. “Because people would feel safer with the killer behind bars?”

  Shelby and I laughed. “Nah,” I said. “They would want to come and talk about it.”

  As I sat there, I became aware of a tugging feeling, like Shelby and Lady Anthea and I needed to get back to what we had been talking about. I could almost feel the pull. I closed my eyes and pretended I was on my surfboard. Where was the tide taking me? My eyes shot open. “Dogs watching,” I whispered. They were looking at me. “Dottie knew the person who stole Dayle’s sleeping pills.”

  “That’s right!” Shelby said. “How did anyone break in if she has a dog? After all, a Dalmatian isn’t a small dog. Wait, maybe the pills were stolen before Dottie was dropped off?”

  “Then how could they have been put in Henry’s water bottle? If Dottie wasn’t there, then Henry and his water bottle wouldn’t be either. Whoever stole those pills knew Dottie and could come in the house without being bitten,” I said.

  “And knew the house well enough to find the pills,” Lady Anthea said. “Currently that is a very confusing house.” She turned to Shelby. “She’s renovating.”

  “If we can get Mary Jane Kerwin in to Dayle’s house, we’ll know if she’s been in it before,” I said. “We can check Dottie’s reaction to her too.”

  “How?” Shelby and Lady Anthea asked at the same time.

  “Mary Jane complained about people asking her for medical advice when they learned she was a nurse. Remember how Monday’s chemo treatment wiped Dayle out? Why don’t I ask Mary Jane to come to Dayle’s house and check on her?” I suggested.

  “Sue, why would she do that?” Lady Anthea asked. “You’re not exactly her favorite person.”

  Shelby seconded this. “She thinks—no offense, but rightly so—that you snitched on her to the police.”

  I looked at Lady Anthea and smiled. “Sounds like compared to you I’m pure as the driven snow. Someone with your knowledge of art wrecks what she and Henry were doing with Peter Collins’s art collection. Let’s call her in the morning.”

  My phone vibrated on my desk. “Maybe this is John texting us with an update.”

  “John, is it?” Lady Anthea said. “Hmm.”

  “It’s Red. He has someone for me to sing a duet with.” I typed and spoke at the same time. Better not be an Elvis impersonator.

  I hit send and we waited.

  “I feel better knowing we have a plan to get hard evidence,” Lady Anthea said.

  “We need someone to make a mistake. I mean, someone other than ourselves,” I said for clarity.

  Soon I received Red’s answer: A singer who sounds like Elvis.

  “I smell a rat,” I said.

  “Do you know what you’ll sing?” Shelby asked.

  “He hasn’t said, but Elvis didn’t record many duets. There was ‘In the Ghetto’ with Lisa Marie, but that wouldn’t hit the right note for a gala, would it?”

  Chapter 24

  I wake up before dawn most mornings, and I was up before the sun on Friday, but when I looked at my phone, I saw I had slept an extra fifteen minutes. From what I could tell, horizontally and from the vantage point of my bed, the weather was all I could ever dream of for our Pet Parent Appreciation Gala. It was forecasted to stay that way. I rolled over and put my feet on the carpet. Nobody ever caught a killer by sleeping late, or as Lady Anthea would say, “having a lie in.” Actually, I just made that up. Someone, somewhere may have.

  A quick call to Dayle Thomas last night was all it had taken to get Lady Anthea and myself invited over. We told her our plan, and she sounded excited for her house and dog to play a role in the adventure. Her words had been, “If it’s not cancer-related, count me in.”

  Five minutes later I was dressed and carrying my running shoes to the front door. I heard a smacking sound and froze. I looked around the empty family room. Who or what had made that noise?

  “Yeeeessss.”

  Now they were whispering?

  “You’re a big boy, aren’t you?”

  That’s when I caught the British accent. It was Lady Anthea. Who was the big boy? Her bedroom door was closed.
I waited for her to say more, or for Big Boy to say something. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Will that be all, ma’am?” The voice was male and very British. As in, ma’am sounded like mom.

  Would that be all? How much had there been?

  “Brilliant,” Lady Anthea said. “How are their appetites?”

  “Antony and Cleo are doing fine. It is only Caesar who seems despondent.” Those were the names of her Corgis! “Should we plan on using Skype again tomorrow?”

  “We may as well. They’re rather used to it now, aren’t they?”

  I tiptoed away. So that’s what she’s been doing these mornings while I thought she was having a lie in. Before I got far, I heard the male voice again.

  “Do you have a date for your return, ma’am?”

  “I— I don’t know yet,” Lady Anthea answered. “Did my brother update you on what’s happened here?”

  “I read the article online,” he said. From his tone I deduced he was a little ashamed of reading like that. Like online was for the wrong sort of people.

  “If our efforts don’t go well today, I may need to stay longer and help out. The owner is an extremely competent business woman. I’m afraid if tonight’s celebration is not a success, she’ll be devastated. And, as you know, Frithsden depends on the earnings from the enterprise.”

  I couldn’t listen anymore. I left as quietly as I could, sitting on one of the front porch rocking chairs to put my running shoes on. How did I become responsible for Frithsden or for her? That’s not what I wanted.

  I jogged through the subdivision and passed Buckingham’s. I hadn’t bothered to warm up and was going faster than I intended by the time I reached Savannah Road, but I didn’t care. That would be the mantra for my run. I don’t care. How had I become so encumbered? I never asked these people to attach themselves to me. I had worked myself into quite a state when I heard the siren come on and then just as quickly die out. I stopped and bent over with my hands on my knees to look at the police car that had pulled up. Wayne’s handsome face grinned out at me.

  “Do you know how fast you were going, young lady?” He got out and leaned back against the side of the car, arms folded against his muscular chest. He was in his Delaware River and Bay Authority Police Uniform, but he’d left his cap in the car. “I can let you off with a warning, but only this once.”