by Dee Ernst
My life was good. I had few complaints. I was even getting a little restless and—dare I say it—bored. The problem was I specialized in mystery novels. Cozies, thrillers, classic whodunits—my mind was never more entertained than when the dead body showed up. And I was good at finding plot holes, making sure the red herrings weren’t too obvious, and tying up all the ends nice and tight. I was an excellent editor, if I do say so myself, because my brain was very good at the little details that made for a first-class mystery. That made my real crime-free life a bit dull. That’s probably why when I got home that morning I went straight to my computer to Google Lacey Mitchell.
Doug and Lacey Mitchell came to Mt. Abrams last year, moving into the old Dwight house after it sat empty for almost six years. There were a string of owners before them, each one doing less and less upkeep until it was a sad, shabby wreck of a place. When we saw the Mitchells putting all sorts of time and money into the house, we were all pretty excited. And when the last of the painters and landscapers drove away, and the Dwight house stood at last, gleaming white in the summer sun, we all waited breathlessly for the first of us to see what the interior looked like.
We were still waiting. We knew nothing more about the family than we did when they first moved in. Hopefully, that was about to change.
There were more Lacey Mitchells than I could have possibly imagined. I narrowed the search to Lacey Mitchells in New Jersey. Nothing. I tried to remember if anyone had found out where they had moved from when the family moved to town.
I texted Shelly. She managed a very busy allergist’s office, but I knew she constantly checked her phone. Sure enough, after searching fruitlessly for fifteen more minutes, I got a text back.
I think VA
Good. Lacey Mitchell, Virginia, and bingo—there she was.
Lacey Scott Montgomery, of the Fairfax Montgomerys, married Douglas Wade Mitchell, on December 24th, 2002. Mr. Mitchell hailed from Austin, Texas, where he was employed as an engineer. Ms. Montgomery recently graduated from Sweet Briar with a degree in public relations.
Public relations? Lacey needed to go get her tuition money back. She’d obviously learned nothing about PR.
Then I Googled the Fairfax Montgomerys. Yes, Lacey did have a mother. Millicent Clair Montgomery, nee Wilcox. She also had a father but not anymore. I read the obituary very carefully. Gerald Montgomery had died the previous February. It happened suddenly. He was survived by his daughter Lacey and two grandsons.
Wait. Why wasn’t the wife mentioned? Had they been divorced?
I looked around the Internet. I was on a mission. No mention of divorce or separation, but I wasn’t sure something like that was open information. Last mention of Millicent was the wedding announcement, back in 2002. Nothing at all since, not even in a Lifestyle section where the comings and goings of the Fairfax elite were carefully documented. Millicent had simply vanished. Much like her daughter.
There was another little snippet about Gerald in what looked to be an even more local weekly paper. There, nestled among pie contest results and advertisements for John Deere tractors, was a little article about the generous Mr. Montgomery and how he had used his family money to better the community by donating to various charities, including the library and Habitat for Humanity.
Hmmm. Family money. According to the Fairfax Bulletin his family money was estimated to be in the neighborhood of five million dollars. And without the wife in the picture, could Lacey have inherited the whole bundle? I sat back and stared at the computer screen.
So much for sick in Buffalo.
“Mom. Are you working?”
“Of course,” I lied. I’d been in the process of trying to see if ol’ Gerald had probated his will, how much was involved, and most importantly, who got it all. I minimized the screen and stared intently at the incredibly tedious cozy mystery I was supposedly copyediting. “What’s up?”
Caitlyn Elizabeth Symons looked exactly like I would have looked at twenty-four if I had been six inches taller with a discernible waist, shapelier butt, and boobs. And a better nose. And red hair. She had her father’s eyes and my chin, which wasn’t a bad thing. She was a very pretty girl with a smokin’ hot body and a potty mouth that could put a longshoreman to shame. She was also very smart about all sorts of things, but not necessarily common sense things. She made, at one point in her high school career, a small solar rocket that placed third in a national science fair. But for God’s sake, don’t let her near an iron.
She walked into my office, which was a sunroom perched in a corner of the second floor directly over the porch, and sank into a battered but cozy armchair I’d stashed in the corner for when I needed to relax my brain. She was sipping coffee from a very large mug.
“Would you kill for five million dollars?” I asked her.
“Depends. Why, did Grandma strike it rich?”
“No.” I swiveled in my office chair away from my computer to face her. “You’d kill Grandma?”
“Of course not. Who has five million dollars?”
“Lacey Mitchell. Her father died recently and may have left her a bundle.”
“Is there anyone in our family to leave us a bundle?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Oh. So we’re going to kill Lacey Mitchell?”
I shook my head again. “Nope.”
She sighed. “Why do you start these conversations?”
“You came up here, remember? I repeat—what’s up?”
“I applied for a fellowship in French comparative literature. They want me to go out for an interview.”
I think my jaw dropped open. I never imagined she’d find anything that was even remotely related to her chosen field of study. But wait—would she get paid for something like that? “Cait, that’s amazing! Oh, I’m so happy for you. When?”
“The first week in June.”
“Where?”
“Catholic University.”
I made a face. “Well you know how I feel about being Catholic, but if they’re willing to take you anyway, that’s just great. Where is that, D.C.?”
“Lyon.”
I stopped being excited. “Lyon as in France?”
She nodded.
“Oh,” I said.
My office has floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, and long gauzy curtains diffuse most of the light, but I swear the world got a little bit darker there for a second. “You’re going to France? They hate us in France. And it’s very expensive there. Finding a place to live is going to be impossible. Don’t you watch House Hunters International?”
“First of all, the French do not hate us. And I’ve been saving money like crazy. You know that. I haven’t bought so much as a new pair of shoes in three years. I’ve got lots of money in the bank.”
I took a deep breath. Oh, my dear, sweet little girl. She was a waitress. She only worked three nights a week. I mean, really, how much could she have saved? I stood up, stretched, and then gazed out the window. “Exactly how much have you got in that little nest egg of yours?”
“Eighteen thousand dollars.”
I spun around to gape at her. “What?”
She looked at me patiently. “Mom, I’ve been working for seven years. Since high school.”
“But part time.”
“Still.”
She waited. I knew what she was thinking.
During her junior year of high school when she should have been traveling around to all the out-of-state colleges she was determined to get into, Marc left. I was a mess. So was she, but for a different reason. She saw the writing on the wall just as clearly as I did. That was the summer she started working at Pierre’s, and that was the summer she told me she could get just as good an education at Rutgers and live at home to save money, keep her part-time job, and help out with Tessa. So she’d commuted through a four-year BA, then a two-year masters program. She was done. I was no longer a quivering mass of depression and anger. Tessa was a serene and oddly mat
ure child. Cait didn’t need to be here anymore.
“Honey, they’ll be lucky to have you. What an amazing opportunity. And you’ll be able to live like a queen. Who knew?”
She flew out of the chair and into my arms, picking me up and hugging me tightly. “Oh, thank you, Mom. I was so afraid you’d freak out.”
There were tears in my eyes. “I am freaking out. I will miss you terribly. But you deserve this.”
She was crying too. “Yeah, I think so. So, which of us tells Tessa?”
Tessa only worshipped her older sister with a devotion formerly found in ancient apostles.
I shook my head. “Not me. This is your dance. You pay the piper.”
She grinned. “Okay. I’ll buy her pizza first.”
I wiped the tears off my face. My little baby. All grown up at last and going off on her own. As much as she was often a huge pain in my butt, I knew I’d have a lot of emotional adjusting to do. “She’ll want your room, you know.”
Cait went back to sit back down, resuming her coffee sipping. “Well, she can’t have it. Not yet. Now, who is this Lacey Mitchell person, and why do you think someone killed her for five million dollars?”
Cait’s announcement distracted me from work—and Lacey Mitchell. We went out to lunch, stopped at the bank to take her passport out of the safety deposit box, and had our toes done. All that girlish bonding did little to make me feel any happier about the fact that my child, my firstborn baby, was going across the ocean to live in a strange country where even though she knew the language and loved the culture, she would be a complete outsider, alone, without her mother’s advice and support.
“Mom, you know I rarely take your advice now,” she reminded me, after I expressed my concern.
“I know. But I can give it to you. I can actually see you smile and nod. How can I do that when you’re in France?”
“Skype.”
Damn that kid. She had an answer for everything.
She dropped me off at the bus stop in Upper Main Park, then drove the car up the hill. It was about twenty minutes until Tessa came home from school, so I sat on a bench and quietly took in a truly beautiful spring day. The forsythia was in bloom, as were the daffodils. Birds were singing. A small bunny hopped across Marie Wu’s front yard. I half expected a Disney princess to burst out from somewhere, singing at the top of her lungs and leading a conga line of dancing deer.
“So Ellie. What about Garden Club?”
Lynn Fahey probably worked for the CIA in a former life. She snuck up on me so suddenly I literally jumped.
“God, Lynn, wear a bell around your neck or something, please?”
She sat next to me, crossed her legs, and began bouncing her foot. She was always in motion. Barely over five feet tall, she was one of those aggressively busy women, running to meetings and organizing events. She was vice president of the Garden Club, a member of the Mt. Abrams Historical Society, was on the local PTA fundraising committee, and ran coffee hour at the Methodist Church. She also had two kids in middle school, and her husband always looked happy.
“I’m not joining the Garden Club, Lynn. For one thing, I don’t have a garden.” My house did have a yard, and there were things planted in that yard, but that had been Marc’s doing. Cait weeded and watered things for me. I mowed the small patch of green that, I’m sure, contained a few blades of grass among the weeds. Tessa had a jade plant that I was trying desperately not to kill.
“You don’t need a yard to be in the Garden Club, Ellie. You just need to love plants.”
“I don’t love plants, Lynn. I have a black thumb.” I glanced at my watch. Eight more minutes until the bus.
Lynn tugged on the end of her braid. Her hair was long and light brown, barely streaked with gray. Her braid fell past her waist, adding to her hippie-chic fashion style. Today she was wearing faded jeans, a batik peasant-style blouse, six or seven long beaded necklaces, and Birkenstocks with argyle socks. “Ellie, please. Do you know what Mary Rose is planning? She wants to put pavers in the library park. Can you imagine?”
The library did not actually have a park. It did have a small grassy area by the entrance, where the Garden Club had planted a bank of hydrangeas a few years ago, and had recently installed a picnic table.
I could see Sharon Butler coming around the corner. Sharon was young, in her early thirties, with a six-year-old son. She was considerably overweight, probably close to two hundred and fifty pounds, but she trotted up the hill with a smile and no apparent shortness of breath. “Honestly, Lynn, pavers aren’t so terrible. It gets really messy around there in the winter.”
That was obviously the wrong thing to say. Lynn and Mary Rose Reed were as close to archenemies as one got in Mt. Abrams. Their wildflower garden feud had been epic.
“Pavers would ice over, and that would mean salt being put down. Salt would get swept to the side, all over the hydrangeas, and would kill them off in just a few years. Do you really want to kill the hydrangeas?”
“Of course, not. So, you want me to join so I can become part of the anti-paver voting block?” Sharon, now within earshot, made a sympathetic face. Lynn’s strong-arm tactics were the stuff of legend.
Lynn leaned over to give me a quick hug. “Exactly. Meeting is Thursday at seven-thirty. In the firehouse. See you there.” She bounced up, waved at Sharon, and then disappeared as quickly as she had come.
Sharon laughed. “Did she recruit you? Pavers?” Sharon was very pretty, always perfectly made up, and her hair carefully colored and styled. She worked from home too, but managed to get herself dressed in coordinated outfits with matching accessories. Today her earrings and necklace complimented the blue in her cotton sweater. She also always wore perfume. I was a tad jealous.
I nodded. The rest of the moms materialized, and seconds later, the bus pulled to a stop. Tessa was first off the bus, of course. She liked being first. At anything and everything. I liked to think that having big sister fed into her competitive spirit.
David and Jordan Mitchell did not get off the bus. They were obviously hanging out at the Mt. Abrams Elementary School gym, along with all the other kids in the after-school program, including Shelly’s boys. The program ran until six. I had often seen Doug pull in as late as eight in the evening. I wondered what other last-minute arrangements he’d had to make.
Tessa lifted her face for a kiss and handed me her backpack.
“Good day?” I asked.
She nodded, standing patiently and waiting until Jerome got off the bus. Jerome’s mom, Jessica, dropped him off every morning, and Tessa and I walked him to Bev Sutter’s house every afternoon, who watched him until Jessica picked him up after she got off work. There were a fair number of stay-at-home moms in Mt. Abrams, but living barely thirty miles west of New York City made for a fairly high cost of living, and most of the families had both parents working.
Maggie came tearing down the hill, just as Serif hopped off the bus.
“Ellie, hold on a sec,” she said. I motioned Tessa and Jerome up the hill, and Serif fell in beside them.
“What?” I asked.
Maggie glanced around, smiled briefly as the rest of the moms drifted away, and leaned toward me. “Did you know that the Mitchell house is for sale?”
I stopped and stared at her. “For sale? Since when?”
“Since yesterday. Viv told me.”
Vivian Brewster was the local real estate agent. Just about every house bought or sold in Mt. Abrams was handled out of her office. She and Maggie, I knew, were not just neighbors but good friends. “Yesterday? Are you sure?”
Maggie nodded. “Yes. But get this. She told Doug she needed Lacey's signature on the contract, but he told her that he had been given power of attorney. He showed her paperwork. And there’s no mortgage. Everything was paid off a few months ago.”
“When her father died,” I muttered.
“Whose father?” Maggie asked.
“Lacey's. Her father died in February. And left
a lot of money behind. Five million bucks.”
Maggie stopped and stared at me. “Her father died? You mean the one who’s supposedly sick in Buffalo?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why would Doug lie?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Lacey's mother still has a phone listing in Virginia, and when I called it yesterday, I got an answering machine.”
We had started walking again, and Maggie poked me in the ribs with her elbow. “You actually called her? What for?”
“I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see where she was. She dropped out of sight after Doug and Lacey’s wedding.”
“Maybe she’s in Buffalo?”
I shook my head, not convinced. “There’s something really odd here. And I think we need to find out what it is.”
I had stopped eating real food about five months ago.
Let me take that back. I stopped eating food that tasted good and satisfied my various sweet/salty/spicy urges five months ago. Now, I only ate stuff that was good for me, which is why I did not go out with Tessa and Cait for pizza, although I was sure Cait would have appreciated the moral support. I, quite simply, could not be trusted anywhere that pizza or pasta was served. I had pretty much zero willpower about pizza and pasta.
When Tessa was born, I was forty years old. I also weighed almost two hundred pounds. My second pregnancy was quite different from my first. Not only did I eat for pretty much the entire nine months, I continued to eat the following nine months. Being over forty, I did not expect the baby weight to fall off as easily as it had the first time around, but I really hadn’t counted on gaining more weight.
My marriage started to fall apart. I lost my job. Tessa was a bit whiney. Cait was a teenager—need I say more? I could often be found wandering up and down the aisles of the Stop and Shop, my cart loaded with frozen Sara Lee banana cream pies and bags of Oreos.
After Marc moved out and I started getting side jobs, I began to feel better about myself. When I finally took a cold, hard look at myself in the mirror, I decided drastic action needed to be taken. I joined a gym and tried different diets, with varying levels of success. Last year, when I could no longer kid myself about “baby weight”—after all, it had been years—I started walking every day with Shelly and Carol. My New Year’s resolution was to lose the last thirty pounds.
