Christmas Carol Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery)

by Meier, Leslie

  Both Scribner and Kirwan looked at her. “Bombs?” the chief repeated.

  “Bombs!” Lucy declared.

  “What’s this about tires?”

  “All four tires on Bill’s truck were slashed this morning,” Lucy said. “And you heard Seth Lesinski at the meeting last night, all but predicting violence if their demands weren’t met.”

  “That’s not proof,” the chief said.

  “It’s proof enough for me!” Scribner declared. “It’s my property and I demand action! I’m a taxpayer, probably the town’s biggest taxpayer, and I want those hooligans out of there by the end of the day!”

  The chief scowled in concentration, considering his course of action. Finally, he nodded. “Okay,” he said, and reached for the phone.

  Lucy enjoyed a few moments of self-righteous satisfaction as she made her way to the Pennysaver office, congratulating herself that she’d actually managed to help convince the chief to take the correct action. It wasn’t until she was walking into the office that it occurred to her to wonder at the strange turn of events that had caused her own interests to align with those of Ben Scribner. That was when she began to doubt she’d done the right thing, but by then it was too late. The police scanner was already buzzing as forces assembled and prepared to raid the squat.

  Lucy covered it, of course, standing by the side of the road and snapping photos as uniformed SWAT team members from the state police deployed, accompanied by local officers, and stormed the shingled cottage. The squatters were brought out with their hands fastened behind their backs in plastic snap ties, their coats over their shoulders, and loaded into a school bus. Lucy was clicking away when Sara’s face appeared on the digital video screen and she had the sickening realization that her daughter would probably never forgive her.

  Once the house was emptied of squatters a team of crime scene investigators went to work, and Lucy also photographed them removing boxes and bags of material. When she asked if they had found evidence of domestic terrorism all she got was a stern “No comment.”

  Following up at the police station, Kirwan would only say that “the material taken from the squat will be analyzed for evidence of domestic terrorism.” For the moment the squatters would be charged with trespassing and the arraignments were under way in Gilead. Lucy raced to the courthouse in the county seat, arriving just in time to produce bail for Sara.

  Sara, much to her mother’s irritation, did not express gratitude for the hundred dollars in cash that Lucy had extracted from the conveniently located ATM in the courthouse lobby. “I missed a poli sci quiz, ’cause of those cops!” Sara fumed. “And I studied and everything.”

  “I’m sure you can make it up. Maybe even get extra credit for getting arrested,” Lucy said. “You got firsthand experience of the justice system. You should offer to write a paper for extra credit.”

  Sara narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be all snarky, Mom.”

  “I’m not. I’m serious,” Lucy said.

  “The judge was horrible. He acted like we were criminals or something.”

  “You broke the law,” Lucy reminded her. “Trespassing is a crime, and after last night’s meeting, they’re going to suspect the group of doing more than just squatting. You know your father’s tires were slashed? Do you know anything about that?”

  “No. Of course not. Seth wouldn’t have anything to do with violence. He said he saw it firsthand in Iraq and Afghanistan and it’s made him a committed pacifist. He believes in passive resistance. When the cops came he told us to go limp and let them arrest us, not to struggle or anything.” Sara turned her head and stared out the window of the car, apparently fascinated by the snowy fields and bare trees along the road. “It was you!” she suddenly declared, whirling around to accuse her mother. “You’re the one who got the cops to raid the squat!”

  “Not really,” Lucy said. “I reported the tire-slashing—of course I did. Your dad is a public official and this is intimidation. It’s illegal, and it was my duty to report it.” She paused, but Sara’s expression remained angry and accusatory. “I think it was really Ben Scribner who convinced the chief. He demanded action and he’s got friends in high places. I don’t think the chief had any alternative, really. It was a question of property rights.”

  “Private property is theft,” Sara declared.

  “Well, then I guess you won’t mind sharing your Uggs with Zoe and letting her wear them every other day, will you?”

  Sara didn’t have an answer for that, so she turned her head once again and watched the scenery roll by.

  Lucy also was silent, wondering if her suspicions about Seth Lesinski were indeed correct. Sara was young and easily influenced, but she knew that her daughter was really a good person at heart. She wouldn’t condone violence—she wouldn’t have anything to do with it, of that Lucy was convinced. Maybe Sara was right about Seth Lesinski, and maybe she herself was wrong. But if that was so, who had sent the bomb? And did the same person slash Bill’s tires? Were they going to find a brightly wrapped bomb in their mailbox, too?

  That night was the dress rehearsal, the final run-through before the weekend performances. Florence had finished painting the scenery, which was still wet, in fact, and Rachel warned everyone to keep clear of it for fear of staining their costumes. Even so, Lucy found the addition of the subtly designed scenery and costumes transformed the show and made it much more believable. Now, Bob wasn’t Bob reciting odd, old-fashioned language, he was Scrooge, complete with mutton-chop whiskers, an enormous pocket watch with a massive gold chain and fob, and a high top hat. And she found it easier to believe herself in the role of Mrs. Cratchit, thanks to the long, full-skirted dress and lace-trimmed mobcap.

  Lucy knew she was not really much of an actor, but when she played the Christmas Yet to Come scene in which Tiny Tim is predicted to have died, she found tears welling in her eyes. Her voice broke as she gazed at his crutch leaning on the wall, no longer needed, and recalled how Bob Cratchit had found his crippled son “very light indeed” when he carried him on his shoulders.

  Rachel gave her a big thumbs-up when she exited the stage, but her thoughts had strayed from Victorian England to the present. It was the possibility that Tiny Tim might die that finally melted Scrooge’s hard heart, and Lucy wondered if learning that Angie Cunningham was actually in danger of dying might work in some way to soften Ben Scribner’s heart. Or not, she thought, remembering how adamantly he’d insisted that the police clear his property of squatters.

  Tragic situations had effects that were hard to predict. She thought of Al Roberts’s surprising, angry reaction when the cast members had offered to help him. If he’d been in his right mind, he would have taken her up on her offer and borrowed her car. But his emotions got in the way. Lucy suspected his anger about Angie’s situation had grown until it colored everything, including the foreclosure. Did he believe that Scribner was the author of all the family’s problems, and had he attempted to get back at Scribner by rigging the scenery to fall on his niece, Florence? Al had walked over to the caroling with her and Bob and Rachel, but he could have left them and gone back to the church hall. She didn’t remember seeing him among the crowd gathered around the bonfire, singing carols.

  She was pulled back to the present when Rachel announced it was time to run through the curtain call, which she predicted would be a standing ovation, and all thoughts of Ben Scribner and Al Roberts and Angie disappeared in the euphoria of the moment. Rachel was over the top, once everyone was on stage, holding hands and bowing together. She clapped and bravoed and congratulated them all, assuring them that the show would be a terrific success.

  Lucy was practically floating as she made her way to the Sunday School classroom that was serving as the women’s dressing room, when she passed Bob in the hallway. He was talking on his cell phone, apparently making an appointment with a client who wanted his will written.

  “Okay, Al,” he was saying. “I can do it tomorrow, but I don’t see wh
at the rush is.” Then there was silence, while Bob was listening and nodding. “Okay, we’ll make it bright and early—nine o’clock suit you?” Then he ended the call, but remained in the hallway, obviously troubled.

  “Is something the matter?” Lucy asked.

  “Oh, Lucy,” he said, looking up and smiling at her. “Great job tonight.”

  Lucy shook her head. “You’re the star of the show; you were fabulous. I had no idea you had such a mean streak. Who knew that there’s a nasty old miser hiding somewhere inside nice generous Bob Goodman?”

  Bob chuckled. “It’s just acting, I’m happy to say.”

  “Oh, right,” Lucy said, teasing him.

  “How’s Bill doing?” he asked. “I heard there was quite a kerfuffle at the FinCom meeting last night.”

  “Not too good,” Lucy said. “Somebody slashed the tires on his truck.”

  Bob’s eyebrows rose in shock. “I know the town employees are angry about the cuts, but I didn’t think they’d do anything like that.”

  “Funny,” Lucy said. “My first thought was that it was the students, that group led by Seth Lesinski. Kids can be really irresponsible and do crazy stuff.”

  “Maybe,” Bob admitted. “But the town employees have really been hurt by the cuts. Here’s just one example. This guy, I’m not gonna mention any names, worked for years and rose through the ranks until he was head of his department. Then he had some health problems and had to take early retirement. He got what probably seemed like a big payout at the time but now isn’t so much. He’s in real financial trouble. . . .”

  Hearing Rachel’s voice, calling him for a photo, Bob paused.

  “Listen, forget I said that. I shouldn’t talk about my clients—” He stopped abruptly. “I’m making it worse, aren’t I?”

  “Forget it,” Lucy said, waving her hand. “I didn’t hear a word of it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Friday morning Lucy woke with an odd mixture of dread and excitement—butterflies were definitely fluttering in her tummy. The show was hours away but she knew she was going to be nervously anticipating the opening curtain all day. What if she forgot her lines? What if she suddenly went blank? What then? A million things could go wrong in a stage show, which depended on the perfectly timed efforts of everyone involved, not only the actors but all the behind-the-scenes workers, too. All she could do was keep repeating her lines and hope that everybody else was focused on the show, too.

  But first she had a long day to get through. Friday was generally a slow day at the Pennysaver, in which she developed a news budget, a list of stories for the next week’s edition. She usually started by going through the press releases that had been sent to the paper, looking for possible story ideas. She also checked the town hall calendar of meetings, as well as the docket at the county courthouse. Then, when she’d put together a list of ideas, she checked with Ted, who nixed or approved her ideas and sometimes had a suggestion or two.

  There was no rush to get to the office, but Lucy was full of nervous energy and found herself unlocking the door at just a few minutes past eight. Phyllis didn’t come in until nine and Ted, being the boss, arrived whenever he felt like it, which was usually around ten-thirty on Fridays, sometimes later. Lucy considered making a pot of coffee and decided against it. Caffeine was the last thing she needed. Her nerves were all ajangle already. Skipping ahead to the next step in her Friday routine, she got the big accordion file of press releases and carried it to her desk, where she began to go through it. It was quite thin this close to Christmas, and nothing caught her interest. Her mind turned to what Bob had told her about one of his clients.

  He hadn’t given a name, but Lucy remembered writing a story a few years ago when Al Roberts retired, and she was pretty sure that he was the employee whom Bob was talking about. It had been the usual congratulatory fluff piece about an employee who had served the town for many years. In Al’s case, he’d been with the highway department for some thirty years, ending his career as superintendent. Even so, thought Lucy, he was a young retiree, not yet sixty. Why, she wondered, had he stopped working at such a relatively young age? As superintendent, he didn’t have to perform difficult physical labor. It was an office job, involving meetings and negotiations and scheduling, with occasional site visits to check on work in progress. He had been making good money, too, by local standards. Why did he give it all up? And why had he hired a lawyer?

  Lucy suspected two possibilities: Al Roberts had been forced to take early retirement because of either a job performance matter or a health issue. Job performance was an area that nobody in town government liked to talk about, because it made employees and officials vulnerable to criticism from taxpayers. Lucy understood that it was simply unfair for a teacher, for example, to be subject to public scrutiny and criticism for a personal matter, perhaps needing extra sick days to care for an ailing relative. Lucy knew only too well how critical some taxpayers could be of town employees, always eager to claim the privilege because they were ultimately paying the employees’ salaries. When it came to health issues and disability claims, especially disability claims, those were even more likely to unleash a torrent of angry outrage.

  But as much as Lucy understood the need for town employees’ job evaluations to remain confidential, she was often frustrated when she encountered this protective wall of silence. Not everything had to make it into print, but background knowledge was valuable to a reporter in that it gave greater understanding of issues and tensions affecting public policy. It helped to know that the superintendent of schools and the town treasurer absolutely loathed each other. If Lucy needed a comment from the town treasurer on a school budget matter, or vice versa, she knew she was likely to get an unprintable reply.

  On the other hand, she admitted ruefully, sometimes she wanted to spice things up a bit. Then a call did the trick, with the addition of a few asterisks and exclamation points because the Pennysaver was decidedly a “family-friendly” publication.

  This Al Roberts thing was none of her business, she reminded herself, but somehow she couldn’t put it out of her mind. It sat there, nibbling away at her thoughts, popping up when she tried to concentrate on the Girl Scout carol sing at the old folks’ home or the New Year’s Eve party at the VFW. Lucy knew perfectly well that Roger Wilcox, the chairman of the Board of Selectmen, would insist on maintaining the confidentiality of Roberts’s records, and Bob Goodman would claim client privilege, but she was also aware of the boxes of town documents that Bill had stashed away in his office. Those boxes were a treasure trove of information, but she was forbidden from looking at them.

  They were extremely tempting, but it would be a violation of journalistic ethics to even peek at them. Even worse, a violation of marital ethics, because Bill was entitled to privacy. She wouldn’t think of opening a letter addressed to him, except for the bills, which were her responsibility to pay. She would never open a personal letter, like a birthday card or something like that. Never.

  She could picture the boxes, however, the image quite clear in her mind. They were beige with a brown stripe, and the words Documents was printed on them. They squatted there, in her imagination, and wouldn’t leave. It was like that second chocolate bar, a buy-one-get-one-free offer, perhaps. You ate the first and saved the second for later, but you couldn’t quite put it out of your mind and you ended up eating it, too.

  Lucy checked the clock on the office wall. It was barely nine. Bill would be at his current job, a summer cottage colony renovation, and Ted wasn’t due anytime soon. She was only after background information, she told herself, pushing back her chair and reaching for her coat. Deep background, that was all.

  Even so, despite her efforts to rationalize away her guilt, she had the uneasy sense that she was doing something wrong when she climbed the narrow stairs to Bill’s attic office. Up there, under the sharply angled ceiling, he’d carved out a space for his desk and files. It was his haven, away from the family, and he’d de
corated the walls with framed baseball cards from his boyhood collection and New England Patriots posters. Lucy ignored quarterback Tom Brady’s rather disapproving gaze as she opened the first box, which contained computer printouts of the town budget from recent years. There was no way she could make head nor tail of that, she decided, replacing the lid.

  The second box, however, was more interesting as it contained minutes of the FinCom’s meetings, including those of executive sessions. Executive sessions were closed to the public and the press and usually concerned confidential personnel matters such as contract negotiations and disability payments. They had been filed neatly according to date and she soon found records of a discussion concerning Al Roberts’s retirement.

  According to the minutes, Roberts had requested early retirement on medical grounds, claiming injuries sustained some seventeen years earlier in a roads project. Roberts, who was then foreman of the town’s road crew, had set a dynamite charge that exploded too soon and he was injured by flying debris. That injury, he claimed with the support of medical documentation, was now causing moderate to severe back pain that made it impossible for him to continue working as superintendent.

  Jake Marlowe had questioned Roberts’s claim, pointing out that the town had paid his medical expenses at the time of the accident. He also noted that when Roberts subsequently filed a lawsuit claiming disability, the committee offered him a lump-sum payment that he accepted, rather than taking the case to court. The amount, twenty-five thousand dollars, had probably seemed generous at the time but, Lucy thought, now seemed rather paltry. Marlowe didn’t mince words, however, accusing Roberts of attempting to blackmail the committee with this new demand for early retirement. Instead, he suggested, the committee should simply refuse to renew his contract and look for a replacement. In other words, Marlowe had threatened to fire Roberts.

  Wow, Lucy thought, sitting back on her heels. She had no idea this was going on. And to think she’d always found FinCom meetings to be boring. Actually, they were. All the exciting stuff took place in executive session.