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by Nadine Doolittle

  “Okay, okay,” Avery said, impatiently waving him off. “Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on. I’ll ask him. Is that all? What else did you learn? I hope you didn’t get stuck on Elliot Marks and forget to ask Detective Denton about everybody else.”

  “I didn’t.” Solly managed to look offended. “The Hansen girl and I worked very diligently on your behalf. At great personal risk, I might add. It cost us a dozen doughnuts to get the desk officer to give up Stewart Denton’s phone number.”

  “And?”

  “And I know what she was killed with. Denton described the lesions on her neck. He said there were photos we could look at if we thought it would help but Hansen put the pieces together without them. Puka shells.”

  “What?”

  “Jenny Blake was strangled with a puka shell necklace. We told Denton. He said he’d look into it.”

  Solomon shoved the rest of the cinnamon bun in his mouth.

  ✽✽✽

  THE NECKLACE was popular in the Seventies with teenagers of both sexes. The jagged white shells from Hawaii were strung on a naturally formed hole, and worn choker-style. Surfers started the trend and then the fashion jumped to the mainstream. In 1975, puka shells could be found on every boy and girl with a tan and on lifeguards in particular.

  “What makes you think it was a puka shell necklace?” Elliot asked. “And not beads for example?”

  They were assembled in the Abercrombie library on Thursday evening for their book club meeting. A light rain was falling; the first signal that their Indian summer was coming to an end. Josie had brought a plate of artisan cheese from the farmers’ market and purple grapes. Avery had arrived with the oatmeal cookies and Elliot offered wine and tea. Their host was wearing a cape of all things against the damp. Avery wouldn’t be surprised if he owned a fedora.

  Pearl and Solomon were in attendance to present their findings. “It’s the most logical thing it could be based on the marks the detective described,” Pearl said. “I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother wearing one in 1975, the year my mom was born. Nana was a bit of a hippy. They look like little sharks teeth.” Pearl lifted her eyes to Elliot. “This strikes me as a crime of opportunity, Mr Marks. The killer didn’t arrive, rope in hand, planning to kill. Strangulation by hand would’ve left prints. He used whatever was handy—a necklace, but not smooth like beads and not a chain that would break.”

  “A puka shell necklace.”

  “Her assailant grabbed it, used it to choke her and removed it after the deed was done.” Avery poured a glass of red wine. “So where is it now? How do we track down a puka shell necklace after all these years?”

  “We don’t have to,” Elliot said, pulling his chin in thought. “The killer knows what he or she used. All we have to do is confirm that Jenny was wearing one that night.”

  “And can’t you do that?” Solomon demanded, throwing Elliot a suspicious look. “I should warn you, Detective Stewart Denton was totally transparent about this case. Your name is in the case file as a person of interest. They interviewed you with a social worker present because you were only ten but still—you might as well admit it.”

  “Admit what, Mr Brice?”

  “That you could be the murderer!” Solomon pounded the arm of his chair. “You could’ve killed Jenny Blake and you’re using us to find out what they know. To stay one step ahead—”

  “One step ahead?” Avery protested loudly. “We’re forty-four years behind!”

  “Is this true,” Hector asked Elliot. “Did the police question you?”

  Elliot moved with a jerky agitated gait to the front of the hearth. “She was my friend. I would never hurt her. The police thought I might be able to shed some light on her state of mind that summer—if she had any enemies or if she was afraid of anyone. They didn’t call me in as a suspect. I was too young, too short, and frankly, I was a weakling. I had trouble climbing a flight of stairs without getting winded. I wasn’t her assailant. I was a witness.”

  “Then explain why your shoes were wet and muddy the day after her body was found—a small detail the police found when they searched your room. If you were supposed to be bedridden, how did your shoes get mud on them?”

  Elliot’s shrewd gaze met Solomon’s. “Common sense should tell you I ventured to a muddy, damp place. Does that describe the crime scene? No, it does not. There was no rain the day of the murder. St. Ives was enjoying a hot, dry summer. However, the creek bed near the railroad tracks is quite damp and muddy. It is also the natural habitat of frogs. I snuck out that night with a flashlight to go frog-hunting. It wasn’t my first time either. Mother had no idea and was alarmed when the police told her.”

  “Then how do you explain the psyche ward? You were put away when you were a kid.” Solomon was clearly not going to let it go. “What was that all about?”

  Elliot’s lean face darkened. “It was not for exhibiting maniacal homicidal tendencies if that’s what you’re thinking. The months I spent in an institution had nothing to do with Jenny. I was placed there for p-p-personal reasons.” The word broke from his lips like a small explosion. “My father died when I was a small boy and I had difficulty accepting that he was never coming b-back. I developed a speech impediment. Mother did what she thought was b-best.”

  His skin had taken on a ghastly sheen. He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m usually able to control it.”

  “That’s enough,” Josie said firmly, glaring at Solomon. “You don’t owe us an explanation, Elliot. This line of questioning is beyond ridiculous. No one here believes you are the culprit.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” Marks replied with dignity. “However, Mr Brice is right to question the facts and demand an explanation. I should have said that the police spoke to me. You may find this hard to believe but I am occasionally absent-minded.”

  “I’m glad that’s cleared up,” Avery said, shooting a warning glance at Solomon. “If we can’t trust each other, we aren’t going to get very far. As club secretary, I move that we take minutes of all discussion here. That way, if there’s any dissension, we have the record to fall back on. We should be chronicling our process anyway, in case we have to make a citizens’ arrest and have to explain how we came to our conclusions.”

  “If we get that far,” Hector said pessimistically. “Elliot Marks is cleared of suspicion. Jesse Sutcliffe was at the Haggerty house at the time of the murder. He couldn’t have done it. Maybe this was a random act of violence. Jenny Blake was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That’s what Missy Hilroy at the bakery thinks. She doesn’t believe anyone in St. Ives is capable of murder.”

  “There was no sexual interference. A stranger would have rape or robbery to motivate an attack. Neither was in evidence. We must assume that we are all capable of murder,” Elliot added ominously. “No one is above suspicion.”

  “Not even you?” Solomon sulked.

  “Not even me, Mr Brice.”

  Helen hunched forward. “Did you ever see a puka shell necklace on Jenny when she babysat you? Think back, Elliot. Try to remember.”

  He speared his fingers through his hair, making it even more unruly if that was possible. “I’m glad you asked, Mrs Potter. This information has sparked a clear—a decidedly clear memory of a necklace that Jenny wore on one occasion. It was white and she said it was made of shells, which fascinated me. They were strung on a piece of sturdy nylon. I didn’t know the name of the shells and Jenny didn’t say. It was a small, seemingly insignificant memory that had no connection to her death until now. Do you see now why this club is so v-vital to solving this mystery?”

  His speech halted, fighting the impediment to get the words out.

  There was a respectful silence and then Dennis spoke. “In the interest of moving forward, can we agree that the murder weapon was a puka shell necklace owned by the victim? It’s a starting point at any rate.”

  “We have the how,” Hector said. “We need to know
the why.”

  Chapter Nine

  AVERY BRUSHED cookie crumbs from her mouth. “I had a very interesting conversation with Missy Hilroy at the bakery.” She told them about Missy and her friend, Casey, crashing the party, Duncan’s romantic pursuit of Jenny Blake, and Karen Haggerty turning to Duncan’s best friend, Frank Zwick after he dumped her.

  “There are a couple of contradictions in the stories we’ve been told. According to Missy, Karen and Jenny knew each other but they were hardly best friends. And she also contradicted the story of Jesse hitting Jenny. She said they were soul mates.”

  “Who said Jesse Sutcliffe hit Jenny?” Solomon asked. “Denton didn’t find anything like that in the original investigation.”

  Pearl flipped through her notes. “Jesse Sutcliffe said he and Jenny broke up near the end of the school year and she started dating Duncan Carmichael. He admitted he was jealous at first but then it wasn’t worth getting bent over. The night she died, he came home from work at nine-thirty and crashed in front of a movie on TV. It was ten-thirty or so when Jenny called—he knew the time because the movie had just ended. She was crying, saying she’d made a huge mistake and she was sorry for breaking up with him. He said she didn’t sound like herself. He was worried and offered to come and get her. She told him she was leaving the party and going home, so there was no need. They hung up, but he couldn’t get the call out of his head so he biked over to the Haggerty house. She wasn’t there, so he went looking for her, taking the route Jenny was most likely to take.”

  “The police made a big deal out of that,” Solomon interjected. “They asked him why he cut through the Abbey at least a half-dozen times. His answer was always the same—it’s the route he knew Jenny would take because she always took that shortcut. The Abbey takes up the whole block. If she cuts through the property she gets home in half the time.”

  “A strike against him,” added Pearl, “was his younger brother’s testimony. He said he didn’t remember hearing the phone ring and Jesse going to answer it.”

  “Thirteen-year-old Missy was in the kitchen when Jenny was on the phone,” Avery said. “She remembers her being upset but Missy wasn’t supposed to be there so she kept it to herself.” Avery turned to Josie. “How did you know Jesse rode his bicycle that night? I remember you made a reference to him cycling to the Haggerty house when we were at lunch last week.”

  Josie dropped a stitch. “Yes, yes I did. I knew it because he told me. Years ago, maybe five or six years after the murder, Jesse was admitted to the hospital for a fractured collarbone. I was the nurse on duty. He was on pain meds and started talking about that night. I didn’t coerce it out of him, he volunteered. He said he’d only biked over to help Jenny but no one believed him, and if he had it to do over again, he would’ve stayed home. It stuck in my mind for some reason that he’d ridden a bike. I don’t think it’s important, is it?”

  “At this point, everything is important,” Dennis said.

  Elliot seemed to snap awake. “Did Jesse ride his bike to the Abbey?”

  They all turned in his direction and blinked.

  Josie answered. “I imagine he must have. Why?”

  Marks lapsed into a dream state again, staring off into space. “The grass was too thick to pedal through. He’d have to walk his bike or leave it on the sidewalk. Which was it?” He gazed at a startled Solomon Brice.

  “He pushed it through the grass. The officer at the scene reported finding a bicycle near the body. The bike is what pointed them in Sutcliffe’s direction. It was pretty damning.”

  Elliot flung his shoulders back and lifted his chin. “Because a boy who is about to strangle his lover in a fit of rage, pushes his bicycle through tall weedy grass and then abandons the bike near the body to call police. Absurd. There is no doubt. We can rule Jesse out as the murderer.”

  He began to pace, his hands waving like a symphony conductor. “If Missy isn’t fabricating her account, and there’s no reason to suspect that she is, it explains why Jenny didn’t turn to Karen. She and Karen were not friends. The good news is we have a witness who can confirm Sutcliffe’s testimony about the phone call. He biked to the party and when he arrived, Duncan was missing. This was a crime of opportunity and a puka shell necklace was the weapon.”

  “We can tell you where Duncan Carmichael was,” Solomon said. “According to the case file, Carmichael was questioned on three separate occasions. Jesse was called in twice.”

  “Oh ho! They obviously had doubts about Councillor Carmichael,” Hector crowed.

  “Sure, well, he had no alibi.” Pearl read from her notes. “He had the means, motive and opportunity—oh, and his story kept changing. At first he said he was at the party but he left early. His house is in the opposite direction of the Abbey so he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary like Jesse Sutcliffe arriving. However, no one at the party could confirm seeing Duncan at the critical time. Then on his second interview, Duncan said he was in one of the bedrooms. The detective pressed him on it and he admitted he was making out with a girl. He didn’t say so before because he didn’t want to get her into trouble. On the third round of questions, he was forced to give up her name or face arrest. The girl was Karen Haggerty.”

  “Karen!” Helen sat back in her chair. “That skunk! And he looked like such a nice boy.”

  “Don’t they all,” her husband said morosely. “This means he’s in the clear. Karen is Duncan’s alibi.”

  “And he is hers,” mused Elliot. He rubbed his chin.

  “Did anyone know him back then?” Pearl asked. “From the story Missy Hilroy gave Avery, he sounds like a total rat.”

  Helen pulled out an electronic tablet, tapped the screen and held it up for all to see. “Well, this is what he looked like in high school.”

  Though she had seen it before, Avery scrutinized the image. At seventeen, Carmichael was a shaggy-haired blonde, blue-eyed jock. A teenage girl’s dream. Popular, easy-going and voted least likely to commit homicide, she concluded wryly.

  She tried to put the pieces together, in an effort to understand how one thing could’ve led to another. It should be easy to see. Avery had a feeling it was, that the solution was staring her in the face and she just couldn’t grab hold of it.

  Missy said that Karen had been dumped and she was going out with Duncan’s best friend. How did she wind up sleeping with Duncan at her own house party? The more they learned about this case, the more opaque the mystery became.

  The autumn rain pattered against the lovely old-fashioned library windows. Wind gusted down the chimney causing the fire to spark and dance higher. Avery curled her feet up on the leather sofa and took another sip of red wine. If they weren’t wrestling over an unsolvable murder, this would be the perfect evening.

  “I have a picture in my mind of what might have happened,” Josie began with a thoughtful frown. “Would anyone care to hear it?”

  Hector raised his hand. “I, for one, would appreciate a recap. I’m completely lost.”

  She settled back and folded her hands over her middle. “Jenny arrived at the party, expecting to see her boyfriend, Duncan. Through some means—maybe the malevolence of teenage girls—she is directed to an upstairs bedroom. She walks in and finds him in bed with his ex-girlfriend. Heartbroken, she goes downstairs and calls her ex-boyfriend for moral support and a shoulder to cry on. She doesn’t go into detail, but she tells him she regrets breaking up with him.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “She leaves the party, too upset to talk—the party is in full swing. In a tragic twist of timing, which happens far more than we’d like to think, Jenny reaches the Abbey grounds just as Jesse is arriving at the Haggerty house. With me so far?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Jesse arrives, looks in at the party, sees that Jenny isn’t with the group and neither is Duncan. He thinks she must be with Duncan or she’s on her way home alone. He goes after her, taking the shortcut through the Abbey and arrives at the sanct
uary ruin where he finds her dead. She’s lying on the stone table so peacefully that he thinks she’s asleep. The murder weapon is not at the scene. He calls 911 from the phone booth on the corner.”

  “Succinctly and accurately put,” Avery said with a smile.

  “Duncan was upstairs in the bedroom with Karen, so that lets him out,” said Dennis.

  “I don’t see that it does,” interjected Hector with a touch of surprise. “He could’ve left the room soon after Jenny walked in on them. He ran after her, heard her on the phone with her old boyfriend and lost his temper. Duncan followed her and in a fit of passion, strangled her.”

  “A crime of passion?” Helen said doubtfully. “He didn’t love Jenny. You make it sound as if he did.”

  “No, but he loved his image. He was the hero who liberated Jenny Blake from the clutches of the weirdo, Jesse Sutcliffe. Duncan Carmichael liked being seen as being the good guy and good guys are not caught in bed with their best friend’s girlfriend. Good guys are not cheaters. I know that type. Image is everything to guys like that.”

  Dennis agreed. “In high school, Duncan was already branding himself as the blue-eyed boy next door. Kids wanted to be like him; parents, teachers and coaches trusted him. The good guy was his image. He had me fooled,” he added grimly. “I voted for him.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” Elliot murmured. He was leaning against the mantle, the firelight flickering over his lean features. His suit was casually rumpled and his hair stuck up in an unfortunate cowlick at the back.

  But there was something else about Elliot that arrested Avery’s attention. He seemed to be off on another planet. She hoped he wasn’t getting bored with their little experiment. They shouldn’t give up just because they’d hit a few snags.

  “He didn’t love Jenny but he couldn’t sacrifice his heroic image,” Helen said. “It was too important to him. Duncan had to get her to see his side of the story and his side was the nice boy who was seduced by the whore into betraying the Madonna. He was confident of winning her over or finding some other means of shutting her up.”