Grave Errors

by Carol J. Perry

  Shannon spoke so softly, I barely made out her words.

  “What did you say, Shannon?”

  She looked up. “I don’t know if I should say anything, but I know where there’s a good picture of that girl.”

  “Where?” We all spoke at once.

  “It’s not a photo. It’s an oil painting.” She pointed at the open wallet. “I’m sure it’s her. It’s in Dakota’s bedroom closet.”

  Dorothy’s gasp was loud enough to draw curious stares from nearby diners.

  Both twins looked up from their papers. Ray, carefully reserving his place at the counter by putting his USA Today on the stool, approached the booth. “Anything wrong, ladies?”

  “I’m not sure. Something the police ought to know about though.” Dorothy, Shannon and I tried to explain about Emily’s pictures—or lack of them—and the oil painting in Dakota Berman’s closet, while Hilda snapped a shot of the girl in Dorothy’s wallet. Roger, putting his Boston Globe on the stool, joined his brother as our group began to draw curious stares from the other diner patrons.

  “I want to see the painting. Now.” Dorothy’s voice was low, but urgent. “I’m going to go home and make him show it to me. Make him explain.”

  “If there is such a painting,” I said, “and if it actually turns out to be of Emily, it could be important to the investigation. I think it’s best to let the police look into it before any of us say anything about it to Dakota. We don’t want to frighten him. What if he destroys it?”

  “I guess you’re right.” Dorothy’s tone was uncertain. “I’d hate it if he did that.”

  “What do you say we stop talking about it for now, finish our breakfasts quietly and go upstairs,” Roger spoke calmly, softly. “Lee, would you like me to call Pete?”

  “Yes, please.” I said. The twins returned to their seats at the counter. All of us in the booth were silent for a long moment. Therese, never at a loss for words, asked when we were going to make the sugar skull cookies. It was a good topic, interesting to all of us, and uninteresting enough to turn away the stares of the curious.

  “It looks as though the weather is going to be gloomy, so if none of you have other plans, we may as well do it tonight,” I said. “The cookie cutters arrived and I have all the ingredients stashed in my kitchen.”

  Agreement to the plan was swift and enthusiastic. All of the women would be at my place at seven. The twins demurred, pleading lack of cooking experience. I texted Aunt Ibby, who agreed immediately to supervise the operation. Cookie baking plans in place and breakfasts hastily finished, we gathered coats and umbrellas and adjourned to the classroom and our ongoing study of Television Production.

  It didn’t take long for Pete to text me. Heading for Berman’s place. Thnx for tip.

  The idea of the young artist having a portrait of Emily hidden in his closet was a chilling one. I wished I could be with Pete, could hear Dakota’s explanation for such a bizarre thing. Instead, I gave a brief introduction to a chapter on staging a set for TV, with special emphasis on using an actual room as background. I reminded the class that our cookie baking video would employ just such techniques and promised a discussion of the chapter when we’d all finished reading.

  It was difficult for me to stay focused on the announced topic, and I made a special effort to avoid even a random glance toward the shoe behind my desk, fearing that an unbidden vision would completely shatter any concentration I’d managed to muster.

  When the reading was finished and the time for discussion arrived, I felt pretty good about my ability to stay on task. Hilda, who was the only one among us who’d interacted with the Shoreses when her parents had sold and bought a house through them, had a good concept of how my kitchen should look. “It’s just like staging a house for sale,” she said. “Minimize. Mrs. Shores told us to take all the personal stuff out. No pictures on the refrigerator. Hardly any stuff on the walls. The customer should be able to visualize their own things in the space.” I thought about Emily Alden. She was surely a minimalist. No pictures. No personal things.

  “You mean I have to take down my Kit Kat clock?” I asked, halfway kidding, halfway serious.

  Opinion on that was divided. We tabled the idea. Therese put on a rerun of an old Cool Weather Cooking with Wanda the Weather Girl program so we could see how a studio kitchen looked. Minimalist indeed. Plain white appliances with a bowl of fruit on the counter. But of course, Wanda was pretty darned decorative by herself. That took us up to noon when the lunchtime bell rang. At the same moment, my phone buzzed and Pete’s name showed on the caller ID.

  “You off for lunch?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Pick you up in five?”

  “Sure. Meet you out front.”

  The rain had let up when Pete’s car coasted to a stop in front of the glass doors of the Tabby. He leaned across the seat and pushed the door open. “Hop in. We only have an hour,” he said, handing me a familiar brown paper bag and a tall paper cup. “Hamburger with extra pickles, medium fries and a chocolate shake. Okay?”

  “Perfect,” I said, and it was. “What did you find out from Dakota?”

  “A lot. And not just from him. I have reports about the soap. And some more about the boots. What a morning!”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “You know I don’t usually share police stuff with you.”

  “I know. I understand.”

  “That’s not what I meant. This is different. If it wasn’t for you and your visions and Dorothy and the others, we’d still be calling Emily Alden’s death an accident. And the Dowgin brothers would just be a couple of Steelers fans. So I’m going to tell you what I know so far.” He smiled and reached over and helped himself to a couple of my fries. “I’ll start with the portrait of Emily. That’s the name of it, by the way. That’s what Berman calls it. Portrait of Emily.”

  Pete drove toward the Salem Willows Park, a good place to stop and talk anytime, rain or shine, summer or winter. We parked under one of the famous willow trees and Pete turned off the engine. Except for the patter of raindrops on the windshield, all was quiet.

  “She never even saw the painting.” Pete’s tone was sorrowful. “He’d asked her to pose for him and she refused to do it. That’s where the peeking in the windows came from. When he was supposed to be painting out on the balcony, he made quick sketches of Emily when she wasn’t looking. He did it when she was watching TV or doing the dishes or reading a book. Then over time, he painted the portrait.”

  “She never even saw it? Is it good?”

  “Looked good to me. He hid it because he knew she didn’t like pictures of herself. I don’t see why. She must have been pretty.”

  I thought of the smiling, listening girl in my vision. “She was,” I said. “Really pretty.”

  “He’s going to give the painting to Dorothy. I think she’ll like that.”

  “I know she will. Tell me the rest. What about the soap?”

  “The soap in the bubble bath bottle was, as you’d guessed, the same as the baby diaper detergent.”

  “But didn’t we agree that they wouldn’t use harmful stuff on baby bottoms?”

  “True. The detergent contains something called benzethonium chloride. It’s an antiseptic they use for cleaning cooking equipment, surgical instruments and—no surprise—for disinfecting cloth diapers. It’s called a cationic detergent.”

  “But you believe it killed Emily? How?”

  “According to our forensic chemist, in really hot water the body absorbs the detergent through the skin. It can cause convulsions, coma and, finally, death. And the autopsy won’t show any trace of cationic detergent at all.”

  “They killed James Dowgin the same way.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Ingenious,” I said, “and horrible. Have you arrested the Shoreses?”

  “We picked Happy up this morning for questioning. He’s lawyered up. Not talking. Trudy flew to Florida yesterday for som
e business at the True Shores office down there. A couple of Broward County sheriffs are going over to talk to her”—he looked at his watch—“right about now. So far we haven’t charged either Shores. We need something more than a few fingerprints on property they already own. And the only two people who knew about the buried poison are dead.”

  “Do you think Happy and Trudy might confess? Tell you where Charlie Putnam’s toxic bottles are buried?”

  “They’ll probably deny that they know anything about it. Word about government trucks and a team of guys in hazmat suits going into the woods looking for milkweed gets around Salem fast though, and about a dozen garden club ladies have called already to tell us where the milkweed butterfly garden is.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Things are moving fast. Where’s Billy Dowgin in all this?”

  “We’ve released Billy,” Pete said. “He wants to meet you, to apologize for frightening you, making you feel as though you were being stalked.”

  “Did he tell you why? Why he followed me?”

  “He did. James was worried about you because you were asking questions about him. About Emily. He wanted Billy to keep an eye on you until it was safe for him to come out of hiding. When James and Emily took the soil samples, it was just for fun. She was interested and he wanted to show her how it was done. They didn’t expect to find anything unusual there. After all, the project had already been approved. When he sent the samples to the lab though, one came back as okay. The other had traces of arsenic trichloride.” Pete shook his head. “Bad stuff. James told Mrs. Shores about it. She seemed really grateful. Rewarded him with a big promotion. CEO of the Florida office. True Shores.”

  “So that’s how he wound up down there. Does Billy know why James faked his own death?”

  “Mrs. Shores even flew down to Florida and told James that everything had been taken care of and thanked him again. The chemical was just some stuff from the old hardware store, she told him. Something they’d used for rats. The project was still good to go. He believed her since he’d heard no word about any problem at the site. The next day his brakes failed. Fortunately, there are very few hills in Florida so he coasted to the side of the road and found that the brake line was partially cut—just enough so that the fluid would leak out.”

  “That tipped him off that something was wrong?”

  “Not right away. He couldn’t believe anyone would do that. Passed it off as a freak accident. But when he was all alone surveying an orange grove, somebody took a shot at him. That convinced him. Emily had just told him that the Shoreses were having a party for her. He tried to warn her not to go. He figured the Shoreses could be lying to him about cleaning up the arsenic in the ground—that they’d found out that she was on the dig with him and that she was in danger too. He faked his drowning and thumbed a ride with a trucker back to Salem. He was too late.”

  “I’d like to talk to Billy,” I decided. “Some neutral place.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll be with you if you want me to.” He started the car. “Lunch time is just about up. I’d better get you back to school. I get off at eleven tonight. Want me to come by?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The ride back to Essex Street was quiet. Pete had given me a lot to think about.

  CHAPTER 44

  By the end of that afternoon I had even more to think about. Within an hour after I’d come back from lunch, right in the middle of a spirited discussion on creative use of the green screen, there was an urgent text from Pete. Turn on the news!

  “Therese,” I said. “Can you turn on WICH-TV please?”

  The popular Salem-based cable station does hourly ten-minute newscasts, concentrating on local news. The flashing “Breaking News” crawl appeared across the bottom of the screen. A rain-soaked Scott Palmer—using his Very Serious Face and Big Network Voice—stood at the corner of the wild woods road in front of a ROAD CLOSED —ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE sign. A couple of Boston TV news trucks were in evidence nearby, along with several military vehicles.

  “I’m a few hundred yards away from the site of the proposed Wildwood Mall,” Scott intoned. “Army engineers arrived on the premises this morning to begin excavation of an area of the property which may have been the site of chemical weapons testing between 1917 and 1920. The Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of the dig, where it is believed there may still be toxic chemicals buried in the ground. Salem residents are cautioned to avoid the area until further notice. Buildings on the site are unoccupied and no evacuations are necessary.”

  The camera panned across the eerie scene, and wind-whipped tree branches made a strange humming, crackling sound in the background. In the distance, I saw the blue Wypee-Dypee building, remnants of yellow police line tape fluttering in the wind.

  Will the CSI people be able to continue their work in there with all this going on?

  “The oncoming storm, Penelope, with winds approaching hurricane force, promises to complicate the process, but city officials assure us that every precaution to insure the safety of Salem citizens is being taken,” Scott counseled his audience. “All plans for the proposed shopping mall are on hold. Stay tuned to WICH-TV for updates, every hour, on the hour.”

  The station returned to regular programming—a vintage episode of Gilligan’s Island—and Therese turned off the monitor. “Wow,” she said. “Good thing that groundbreaking for the mall got canceled. It would have been a bummer if the mayor had dug up a shovel full of poison gas.”

  “I don’t think you can put gas in a shovel, can you?” Shannon asked. “It would have to be in something, wouldn’t it?”

  “Glass bottles,” I murmured, remembering the photo of Charlie Putnam. “Lots of glass bottles.”

  Returning the group to concentrating on the mundane classwork I’d scheduled seemed unlikely, so I let the conversation flow—but with a TV news aspect. “What kind of research do you suppose the TV station staffs are doing right now in preparation for future stories on this?” I asked. “Where are they going to find it? What kinds of experts will the investigative reporter approach for interviews?” I picked up my colored markers and stood beside the white board. The ideas flowed so quickly that I found it difficult to keep up. The excitement was tangible and their enthusiastic responses made me proud of all of them.

  At the end of the school day, Dorothy, Hilda, Shannon and Therese made plans to have dinner together in the diner and to ride together in Hilda’s car to the house on Winter Street for our cookie baking project.

  * * *

  There’s nothing quite like the cozy comfort of a warm, good-smelling kitchen in the company of friends on a cold, dark and rainy evening. In the interests of TV-appropriate décor, I’d removed clippings, photos and cute magnets from the front of the refrigerator, but allowed Kit Kat to stay in his place on the wall. Aunt Ibby had gathered the necessary ingredients and utensils in assembly-line fashion, and before long, under my aunt’s expert direction, the five of us were measuring, sifting, rolling and cutting like pros.

  Therese filmed the proceedings as we turned out cookie sheet after cookie sheet of perfectly formed, just-brown-enough-around-the-edges skull-shaped treats and placed them on rows of wire racks to cool. As we worked, there were few comments about the happenings at the wild woods, other than a general consensus that whatever it was didn’t look good. The portrait of Emily wasn’t mentioned at all. With printouts of Hilda’s magazine how-to instructions on giving the blank skulls colorful frosting faces, we prepared to test our artistic skills.

  “Should have invited Dakota for the arty part,” Dorothy said, carefully spreading a background of sweet white frosting onto a cookie. “He’d be great at this.” With a flourish of a pastry tube, she drew two round eyes with red icing, placing a tiny silver candy ball in the center of each one, and passed the cookie over to Hilda who stood ready with a tube full of blue for outlining rows of teeth. Shannon added touches of yellow and I was in charge of green swirls and leaves. Aunt Ibby did pink ros
es. The process continued, with a minimum of snacking on mistakes, until we’d produced around four dozen of the grinning sweets. The resulting cookies, while maybe not quite as professionally rendered as the magazine pictures, looked pretty darned good.

  Therese zoomed in on the twelve best-looking ones, displayed on one of Aunt Ibby’s silver trays for the closing shot. “Good job, everybody,” she said. “This will attract some attention on WICH-TV for sure.”

  And Mr. Doan doesn’t have to pay for it. He loves free programming.

  “Now what are we going to do with them?” Shannon asked, licking traces of yellow frosting from her lips. “We can’t very well eat them all.”

  “We should take some to school tomorrow for Ray and Roger,” Dorothy said, and Aunt Ibby thought the break room at the library could handle a dozen.

  “I’ll take a dozen over to the police station,” I offered, “and if we each keep a few to nibble on, that’ll take care of the whole batch.”

  “That wind sounds like it’s picking up.” Hilda cast a worried glance toward the kitchen window, where O’Ryan still lay sprawled out across the sill. “I think maybe we should get going before it gets worse.”

  The others agreed, and with everyone pitching in, the kitchen cleanup was accomplished in minutes. Before Kit Kat displayed nine o’clock, they’d all left with three plastic-bagged cookies each, while I packed the remaining three dozen into boxes for the library, the twins and the police station.

  “That was a job well done,” I said to the cat, who blinked in my direction but didn’t move. “Come watch TV with me. I want to see what’s happening with Happy and Trudy Shores and the big dig at the wild woods.”

  With a wide, pink-mouthed yawn and a leisurely stretch, O’Ryan left his windowsill perch, trotted ahead of me down the hall to the living room and hopped up onto the wing chair. We caught some of the nine o’clock local news. The same shot I’d seen earlier of the military and media trucks in front of the mall site filled the screen. The voice-over repeated just about the same things Scott had said earlier, while a square in the lower left side of the screen showed an updated track of the storm which seemed to be veering closer to the Massachusetts coast.