by Gayle Roper
“Why did she come back? Did she say?” I eyed him. “I’m sure you asked.”
“I did, but you know I can’t talk about an open case with you, Merry.”
“Yes, but isn’t it strange that she’s here when the murder happened? I mean, after not being here all those years?”
He held up a hand in a halt gesture. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Just because she’s in town doesn’t mean she’s automatically connected with the crime.”
“Well, I think the timing is a bit suspicious.”
He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Just another little mystery to go with the one you might be able to help me with.”
“Yeah?” I sat up straighter, immediately off balance. William usually told me to step back, not give him help.
“Yesterday when Officer Schumann went to Martha Colby’s home, she met a very irate neighbor.”
Mrs. Wilson. Oh, boy.
“This neighbor, a remarkably agile, clear-minded woman of eighty-three years, told Officer Schumann about a ‘housebreaker’ whose name she couldn’t quite remember, but she thought it might be Joy. She said that the woman was, and I quote, ‘a bad un.’”
Housebreaker? A bad un? I almost wished I had my own burglar bar. Then I could challenge Mrs. Wilson to a duel for the slur to my character and she and I could have crossed bars as cavaliers used to cross rapiers.
“Have you any idea who this woman might be?” William looked at me, his craggy face stern.
I swallowed. “Is this woman in trouble?”
“It depends on whether she broke any laws.”
I thought of how I’d wandered through all the rooms. “Like what?”
“Did she break and enter? Steal anything?”
I thought of the diary burning a huge hole in my purse. “I’m certain she didn’t break and enter. She knocked on the door and it flew open.” Okay, flew might be an exaggeration, but it was definitely not closed. “She called hello and when no one answered, she went in to be certain everything was okay.” Just a good neighbor doing a good deed. That was me. It just happened I did this good deed in the house of a recently murdered woman.
“And what did she find?” William asked, his eyes watching me like the cat that had cornered the poor little innocent mouse housebreaker.
“She found a pretty house that had already been searched.”
“How did she know that?”
“Mrs. Wilson told me—her. Ken Mackey had been there and the new boyfriend whose name she doesn’t know. Have you found Ken Mackey yet?” I asked in the hopes I could distract him from my iniquitous behavior.
“No. What else did she see?”
Well, I hadn’t really thought that ploy would work. William was too sharp. “She said pictures had been displaced and some things knocked over. She thought some pictures might have been taken. Oh, and the bathroom was a mess.”
William suddenly leaned forward and I fought the urge to lean back. “Now my big question,” he said, his intense gaze drilling into me. How did bad guys ever keep from spilling their guts when someone like William went after them? Any minute now I’d confess to everything from assassinating Abraham Lincoln to stealing the atomic bomb secrets for the Rosenbergs. “Did she take anything?”
I shook my head so hard I felt like a bobble-head doll. “No! She didn’t take anything! And she didn’t touch anything, either.” I shifted, nervous. My purse shifted with me and I realized I’d just lied to William. “I mean, she didn’t intend to take anything. It just sort of happened.”
William said nothing, just stretched out his hand.
I reached into my purse and extracted the diary sealed in a plastic bag. It looked so innocuous, so ordinary. How could something so commonplace be so damning?
“I found it on the back patio, sort of like someone had dropped it,” I said. “I picked it up without thinking. When Mrs. Wilson came out, I dropped it in my purse because for some reason I can’t explain, I didn’t want her to see it.”
He pointed his index finger at me, his hand in the form of a revolver. “Did you read it, Merry?”
I flushed. “Yes.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. The unspoken words, save me from amateur detectives and newspaper reporters, hung in the air between us like the dialogue bubble in an old comic. He opened the plastic bag and let the diary fall onto his desk.
Don’t open it! Please don’t open it. Ever.
Foolish, foolish wish. William picked up a pen and with the retracted end lifted the cover. Holding the cover open with the pen, he used the eraser end of a yellow Ticonderoga pencil to flip through the book page by page, scanning, tucking each page under the pen as he moved through.
Perched there on my uncomfortable plastic chair, my knees together, my hands clenched, I felt like Quisling, that Norwegian traitor in World War II who helped the Nazis. His name was now a synonym for turncoat. Of course, William was hardly the Nazis and turning in a piece of critical evidence wasn’t anything like turning on your countrymen. Still, no matter how right and lawful my actions, I knew that in the future Merrileigh would be a synonym for a false, fair-weather friend.
I sat as still as I could. Then I saw William’s eyebrows rise and he stopped turning and read.
I suddenly felt twitchy all over. I knew exactly what he was reading. Last night as I sat with the diary in bed, leaning comfortably on my pillows with Whiskers purring at my side, I’d sat straight up and yelled, “No!”
Whiskers jumped and snarled at me for wakening and dislodging him. Tail high, he stalked to the foot of the bed where he turned in a circle several times before collapsing with a loud umph! I reread the entry dated April 20, but it said the same terrible thing it had the first time through.
Once again, Mac to the rescue. Tall, dark, good-looking—and such fun! Goodbye, Ken. Hello, happiness. How does a girl get so lucky yet again?
Following that were two and a half months of glowing entries about Mac mixed every so often with mention of his temper, the bruises on her upper arms, the broken crockery, ending with a recounting of a visit to the dentist a week ago to have a broken tooth repaired.
I told him I walked into a door, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. I told Mac that if he ever touched me like that again, I was going to the police. I mean, he actually punched me in the mouth! As usual he made apologies all over the place, brought me flowers and told me how wonderful I was. No wonder he can convince people so well. Words are his stock in trade. I’m not sure about anything anymore except that I love him and he scares me. What a mess!
By the time I was finished, I was on my knees beside the toilet losing what little was left of my spaghetti dinner. I sat huddled on the floor leaning against the tub, my mouth tasting sour.
So Mac had come into her life again. That didn’t mean he had killed her. It didn’t. But what about Dawn? Would he kill Martha to keep Dawn from knowing about her? About his temper? His abuse?
And how did I know it was my Mac Martha was referring to? Surely there were other people in and around Amhearst called Mac. I just didn’t happen to know them.
I spent a long time wrestling with myself about turning the diary over to William. Even if it wasn’t our Mac, it would put him in a bad position because of his previous relationship with Martha. Once again, Mac to the rescue.
But there was really no choice, and so here I sat watching William read the damaging words.
After a few minutes of silence William looked at me. “Who else has read this?”
“No one.” I felt sort of offended that he’d even think I’d share something so vital to the case with others.
“Not Curt?”
I shook my head. Of course, if we’d already been married and he’d been there in the middle of the night, I’d have shared it. I also would have cried on his shoulder.
“Jolene?”
“Good night, no.”
“Mac?”
Again I shook my head. I had wanted to. I wanted to
point to the April 20 passage and say, “Where were you that night? Tell me this isn’t you. Prove to me this isn’t you.”
Of course I couldn’t show him or ask him about it. That was William’s job. If Mac was involved somehow in Martha’s murder, he had to be held accountable.
Oh, Lord, please! Not my Mac.
William looked at me sternly as he tapped the diary with the Ticonderoga eraser. “You can’t mention this to Mac, Merry.”
“I know.”
“And you can’t write about this.”
I looked at him, utterly miserable. “I have to write something. What can you give me?”
“The investigation is moving—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Apace. That is absolutely no help.”
He grinned, his shar-pei wrinkles shifting like a crumpled sheet of paper suddenly smoothed. “You could help us locate Ken Mackey.”
“Is he a suspect?” Maybe he could take the heat away from Mac.
“We just want to talk with him given his friendship with the victim.”
“I’m sure Mrs. Wilson told Officer Schumann that Ken has moved out.”
“But not where he went.”
“She didn’t like him,” I said. “He was dirty and smelly.”
William nodded. “He races motocross. I’m sure he’s often both.”
I thought of the pictures of him that littered the Web. In each he was muddier than the last or he was tumbling head over heels into a fence or another rider. There had to be safer, cleaner ways to have fun, but dirty and smelly it certainly was.
“Mrs. Wilson likes the new boyfriend,” I said. “Mac.” Mac, who had taken Ken’s place, if not in the house itself, certainly in Martha’s heart. “I bet Ken resented Mac a bunch.”
“Maybe.” William let the diary fall shut. “But we have to locate him to find out.”
NINE
Before I left home to meet with Sergeant Poole, I’d sent Mac several inches of story about Martha, the investigation, the murder weapon and Mrs. Wilson minus the burglar bar. Now I sat in my car and, using my wireless laptop, added a couple of lines about the police seeking Ken Mackey to talk with and sent it to Mac, too. He would cut as needed to fit today’s edition.
As a result I was able to go straight from the police station to my interview with Tug Mercer of Good Hands after one quick stop at a Turkey Hill Minit Mart to grab a Diet Coke and a cream-filled Tastykake coffee cake.
Tug was a big blond man, not so much tall as large. His navy polo shirt with the stitched Good Hands logo stretched over his shoulders and body, but he wasn’t lumpy or chubby. Just solid. Impressive. When he shook my hand and gave me his open smile, I automatically smiled back.
“I’m more surprised than anyone at what Good Hands has become.” He sat behind his desk with me facing him in a sturdy molded plastic chair. His office was in an old house that belonged to one of the churches in town and had been converted into cheap office space for various Christian enterprises. The office walls held pictures of before and after houses, doubtless Good Hands projects, as well as several framed prints that showed collections of hand tools or plumbing equipment or architectural paraphernalia. A manly office appropriate for one who oversaw the repair of dilapidated homes.
“How long has Good Hands existed?” I asked
“The idea first came to me twelve years ago,” Tug said, “but it took two years to figure out exactly what it was that God wanted me to do and the best way to do it.”
I looked up from my trusty notepad. “Explain.”
Tug leaned back in his chair. “I was sitting in church minding my own business when I got the idea of helping needy people in substandard housing in Chester County. It was one of those God-thoughts that is so outlandish that you automatically doubt it. One proof that the idea is from God is if it doesn’t go away but continues to eat at you. This idea eventually ate me whole.”
He grinned happily at the memory of being consumed with his God-thought. I liked Tug and his enthusiasm for what he considered his call from God. I could easily see him with a tool belt around his waist and a hammer in his hand. I wondered if Mac realized how much of a faith story this article was going to become.
I checked the tape recorder on Tug’s desk just to be certain the wheels were still turning. They were. “What did you do before you got the idea for Good Hands?”
“I taught school. I loved it and the kids. Often in the summers I took students to help out in Appalachia through the Appalachia Service Project. We helped repair houses, fixing and painting and building all kinds of things. So when the idea for Good Hands first came to me, I knew what would be involved. Trouble was, I didn’t want to leave my teaching.”
A knock on the door drew both Tug and me.
“Sorry, Tug, but we just wanted to say hi and goodbye before we go home.” A pretty, petite woman with huge brown eyes and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail stood in the door. “I forgot you had a meeting.”
Tug jumped to his feet. “Come on in, Candy. Meet Merry Kramer from The News. Merry, my wife, Candy.”
“Hi, Merry.” Candy Mercer gave me a brilliant smile as she held out her hand. After we shook, she met Tug at the corner of his desk. He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She reached up and patted him gently.
Behind Candy slouched a girl I judged to be about fifteen or sixteen, much fairer than her mother, several inches taller and many pounds heavier. Her daddy’s little girl, at least physically. She would have been pretty except for the sullen look and the heavy black makeup rimming her eyes. She wore a baggy black T-shirt and a black pair of sweatpants in spite of the warmth of the day. Her round cheeks were pale and her brown eyes sad.
“And this is Bailey,” Tug said. He smiled at Bailey as he gave her cheek a kiss, too. “We’re trying to decide if she’s turning goth on us and hasn’t gotten all the way there yet or if she just has a thing for black.” There was no rancor or mockery in his voice.
“Dad,” Bailey muttered, embarrassed, but she half smiled. Clearly this topic was a family joke.
“I certainly hope you never touch that beautiful blond hair with black dye,” I said fervently. “I’ve rarely seen such a wonderful color. Or colors.” I peeked behind Bailey to see how far down her back the yellow, gold and silver strands fell. It cascaded over her black backpack and I couldn’t help but grin at the incongruous sight of a couple of knitting needles sticking out of the backpack and through her hair. Lovely, fuzzy, pale yellow yarn pushed against the heel of one. How fascinating that the semigoth was working with such a delicate shade, one that would be absolutely wonderful with that gorgeous hair, especially if she eased up a bit on the black eyes.
Bailey flushed at my compliment, with pleasure, not embarrassment, I thought. Her parents looked at her with love and worry.
“Can you sit on it?” I asked, remembering that not too long ago my hair had been long like that, though not that stunning shade. Cutting it had been part of my decision to remake my life, as had been my move to Amhearst.
She shook her head, pushing one side of the glorious sweep behind an ear. “I keep it cut at my waist. It’s hard enough to get it dry now. I don’t need any more.”
“It’s absolutely gorgeous. You’re very lucky. And guys do seem drawn to blondes, you know.” I grinned at her.
She dropped her eyes and shook her head, her pallor returning.
Touchy topic. I wondered how hard it was for her with her excess weight, how much the kids teased her at school, how much she disliked herself. Being her age could be so hard!
“I’ve been telling Merry how Good Hands got started,” Tug announced in the small silence that followed Bailey’s apparent embarrassment.
Candy followed his lead and pointed a finger at him. “Did you tell her how I started wondering if all you were ever going to do was plan this organization and its purposes and never get around to actually fixing up houses?”
Tug took her out-thrust hand. “I’m sure you’
ll tell that part better than me.”
Candy smiled at him as he continued to hold her hand. She turned to me. “Tug’s got two friends who are in the business world, and they met with him for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, evening snacks—you name it. They planned Good Hands meticulously, applied for and got not-for-profit status, wrote mission statements, vision statements, anything you can imagine. Not that all that wasn’t good. It got Good Hands off to a wonderfully sound start, but I thought they’d never get beyond planning.”
“That’s because we didn’t know how to get local needy home owners to want our services. We just couldn’t walk up to someone and say, ‘Your house needs fixing. Let us do it for you.’ Also, there’s no way to know by looking whether the house was owned by the people living there or rented. We aren’t in business to do what landlords should be doing.”
I saw Bailey sort of flinch. She grabbed Candy’s arm. “Come on, Mom. I need to get home.”
Candy nodded. “Tell Merry about Simon,” she ordered as she leaned forward to kiss Tug goodbye.
“Wait a minute,” he said though he leaned in for the kiss. “Before you go, show Merry your storeroom.”
“Storerooms, plural,” Candy corrected. “Come on, Merry.” She turned and walked down the hall. I followed her while Bailey stayed with Tug. Candy opened one room stuffed with used furniture.
“All donated,” she said proudly. “We’ll refinish it or reupholster it as needed.”
She opened a second door and I saw a room lined with shelves, all but one stacked with fabric in various bright prints. Three sewing machines sat in the middle of the room.
“Sheets, blankets and quilts, mostly,” Candy said, waving at the shelves. “We go to Appalachia two or three times a year and buy quantities at wonderful prices at the various mills located down there. We use the sheets to make great curtains and bed hangings.”
“What’s stored there?” I pointed to boxes stacked on the other shelf.
“Wallpaper borders.”
As we walked back to Tug’s office she described how she and a group of women with skills in interior design would go into a house that Good Hands was working on and redecorate if asked.
