A Deadly Snow Fall (22 page)

Mary perked up and continued with her story.
“Before the tramp left, I’d see through the windows at night when
they had the place lit up like a bonfire. They’d be dancing and
snuggling. It was disgusting. Old Ned was ancient by that time, but
he was sashaying around like he was a boy. Well, he’d never cared
what anyone thought of him anyway. Then, Estrella was gone. Edwin
came home to stay and the rest is history as they say.” Mary’s face
clouded over and she sighed deeply. Patton scratched at the back
door and Mary rose to let him in. Patton came to sit at Mary’s feet
looking up at her with concerned eyes.

Pouring more tea for us all, Mary continued
her story although it was obvious that something vital was missing.
She’d slipped a piece of the puzzle into her pocket. I could see
the hole but was at a loss to fill it. “Ungrateful boy. Not a word
or thanks. Made me wonder why I’d even bothered doing it for
him.”

“Mrs. Malone, did you ever speak to Estrella
when she was living with Edwin’s father?” I asked, hoping Mary’s
answer might lead back to the question of what she did for Edwin
for which she’d received no thanks.

“Occasionally over the garden fence, but she
was not our kind. My husband used to make furniture for people,
special things with fine details and his workshop in our cellar is
still there. It was just a hobby but he was good at it. He had all
the right tools and he was so proud of them. I oil his tools and
keep everything really nice in his memory. Once she ordered a table
from him but he refused to make it because she was living in
flagrant sin and he told her that in no uncertain terms. That was
the end of any neighborly communication. My husband died soon
after.”

“Then she disappeared from one day to the
next, Mary?”

A simple, “yes” and Mary appeared ready to
shut down just like the controlling Eloise. But I was not about to
let that happen. Not when we’d come so close. I looked to James and
he gave me the silent high sign.

“So, once Estrella was out of the way, the
inheritance reverted back to Edwin. Correct, Mary?”

“Yes, dear; that was why…well now, how about
some nice chocolate chip cookies, dear?” We were so close. There
was no way I was going to let Mary avoid what I was afraid she had
to tell and was trying to skirt around as if it shouldn’t matter. I
was sure that for all the years since Estrella disappeared, Mary
had neatly compartmentalized her deed and labeled it, naughty but
necessary.

“You would have done anything for Edwin;
wouldn’t you, Mary?” I hoped the affection and understanding in my
voice would earn the woman’s confidence.

Mary leaned down to scratch Patton behind the
ears. Returning to our eyes intent upon her, she paled and seemed
to slip into a semi-trance. Her words got a bit slurred as if she’d
been into the elderberry wine. She spoke but not to us. Looking
into space, she spoke to Edwin. Wherever the old coot had gone in
the after-life.

“I had to impress you with just how much I
loved you. I was sure you would be grateful and realize what a
great sacrifice I’d made for you and love me back. I was widowed by
then and I could have made you happy. Not like that Rosita who gave
her favors to others and left you to be the ridicule of the whole
town.”

Before James could speak, I was jumping into
the ring. “So you took matters into your own hands, didn’t you
Mary?”

James looked at me with wide eyes. He reached
out and took Mary’s hands in his.

Mary turned to James and smiled at him but
said not a word. I worried that the thread had been broken and we’d
find out no more. There was a long silence and then Mary began
speaking again. She was calm and seemingly transfixed on what she
saw in her mind’s eye, a place far away in time and space where the
present company could not follow her.

“Edwin came home that last summer before
everything changed for good. That was when he found out what his
father had done. That awful Estrella taunted him, telling him what
she was going to do after his father died and she was a rich woman.
She was going to Paris and Rome and she was going to buy furs and
jewels and on and on she went.”

“Did he confront his father about the will,
Mary?”

“No dear. No one confronted old Ned. No one.
No, Edwin just simmered and drank and ran around with a rough
crowd. That drunken artist and his wife and their city friends took
him under their wings and taught him lots of bad ways.”

“So, that was when be began seeing Rosita
Gonsalves, Mary?”

Mary didn’t answer but once again slipped
into a kind of free association drift and I was sure the scene she
was seeing was not the present but something that happened over
sixty years ago.

“When Edwin went to New York that winter
weekend like a fool traipsing after those artsy people, I happened
to be out in the yard on the Saturday. It was a mild day but there
was Estrella muffled up in furs the old man had bought her. I
suddenly had such a fine idea it startled me. It would be so
simple. So neat and clean. I called to her and invited her over to
tea. Old Ned was down with the gout and the doctor had him all
drugged up for the pain. He slept right through and woke around
midnight to find her gone. She never suspected that I was being
anything but a friendly neighbor and came right over.

“I invited her to come in by the cellar door
and, slipping behind her silently, I locked the door. There she was
in her leopard coat looking like a trapped animal. I had set the
perfect trap for the jungle cat. All it took was hitting her over
the head with an axe and then there were all those lovely saws and
rippers just waiting to send the slattern to H. E. L. L.”

We both sat shocked but silent. Equally
surprising as her grisly story was Mary’s tone that she might have
used to report on a successful bake sale. Mary smiled a sweet
grandmotherly smile at James and patted his hands. Was she
expecting congratulations for her heartfelt deed?

“So, you took Estrella’s body and cut it up
and buried some of it in your garden and hid some bones around town
in other people’s gardens, Mary?” The handsome Irish cop’s voice
was unsteady, shocked that the cookie-baking woman could have done
something so dastardly.

“Oh, no, dear, at least not right away. No. I
dragged her out into my backyard and dug a hole and pushed her in.
I was still young and strong and she was only a bag of bones,
anyway.” She laughed at her own macabre joke but James and I sat
quietly, barely breathing.

“Some time later, after I read a very good
mystery, I think it was either Agatha Christie or Somerset
Maugham…no, I think it might have been Mary Roberts Rinehart. No,
now I remember; it was Poe. I got the idea of cutting her up and
doing what a maniacal killer might do. Figured if the police ever
came looking and found her I’d tell them the old man went wild and
did it. I’d say I was frightened for my own life, so I kept mum. I
had such a fine story all made up about it. It began to seem like a
lot of fun. Like a movie.”

“So, you cut Estrella in pieces and did what
with the pieces, Mary?” James looked gray.

“I tried to get into the mind of a terrible
murderer. First, I cut off one leg and then one hand. I planned to
cut her all up like a Sunday roast and then spread the pieces
around the town. Wasn’t that a good plan? Sounds like a really
scary movie, doesn’t it, dears?”

We nodded. Mary’s mind was going fast. She
did not see anything wrong in what she had done to Estrella. After
all, she’d been motivated by the deepest of love.

“I soon grew tired of that, you see. After I
took her leg and buried it in Libby’s garden and her hand in the
Gonsalves’s garden, that was it. Changed my plan.”

“Mary, why Libby’s and the Gonsalves’? Was
there some important meaning behind those choices?’

“Yes, dear. Libby always loved a good
mystery. Thought one day to tell her and we’d get a good laugh out
of it. The hand, though, in the Gonsalves’s garden was a kind of
tribute. To Rosita. You see, although I’d been very angry with her
for leaving poor Edwin at the altar, I later came around. One day,
Rosita’s mother told me that she knew where her daughter was and
that she’d had Edwin’s baby. Well, you can imagine my shock. Told
me that Rosita had written to Edwin telling him about the baby and
asking for financial assistance. He’d flatly refused her. The
Gonsalves didn’t have much at the time. With all those children and
just a little store to support them, they couldn’t help their
daughter. So, as I had plenty of money, I began sending her checks
each month for the little girl, Edna. Edwin’s child.” Tears ran
down Mary’s face and I handed her a tissue. She smiled and patted
my hand.

Poor Mary had slipped a cog right before our
eyes. For some reason, it occurred to me, I was sounding very much
like Daphne. Oh, well; shock does funny things to a person.

A deep breath and she was back to her story.
James reached under the table for my hand. Together we waited for
what was to come.

“Can you imagine? Edwin actually laughed when
I told him I’d killed her for him so he could be happy again?
Ungrateful man. Then he went and proposed to Rosita Gonsalves.
Treated me like some kind of hired help. Like he’d hired me to kill
the interloper so he could ride off on his high horse with the
prettiest girl in town.”

“Did he ever mention it again, Mary?”

“No. Not until recently, that is. We hadn’t
spoken a word in years and then one night not long before he died,
he came to the door and asked if he could come in. Well, I was all
alone and a little company is nice now and then, even an ungrateful
rat like Edwin Snow III.”

“What did he want?”

“He got to recalling lots of things about the
old days, but I knew he was up to something. All that fondness for
the old days was just a way to try to get to me. Soften me up. He
asked me to do something for him. A special favor. He was having
some trouble and he wanted me to help him, as he said, “because
you’ve done something like it before.” When he told me what he
wanted, I flatly refused to help him. He was really angry and
called me a hypocrite. Said that once someone has done one murder
the others came easily. Imagine that?”

“He asked you to murder someone, Mary?” James
looked shocked but I had an idea of who that someone had been that
Edwin wanted disposed of. A thorn in his side. Someone demanding
some of his precious money. The blackmailer.

“I refused to listen to why he wanted that
sweet woman killed. Such a kind and sincere person, so concerned
with the welfare of the town’s citizens.”

Emily Sunshine. Blazing before my eyes in
neon letters, the name slipped into the gaping hole in the puzzle.
Hypotheses: Emily found out about Edwin’s father’s mistress, the
change in the will and that Estrella had suddenly disappeared. Of
course, most likely it had been Mary Malone who’d told her. How
opportune. The richest man in town and Emily had the goods on him.
Why not blackmail? Emily certainly wasn’t getting rich telling
fortunes.

No time to think this through any further as
Mary began a slow motion slide toward the floor. James reached out
and prevented her from hitting the wood floor. Placing her on the
nearby loveseat, he looked completely crestfallen. It occurred to
me that with his sweet sensitivity to people’s troubles, it was a
good thing he worked in a small village rather than a city. I
covered Mary with an afghan and reached out to James who came into
my arms for a reassuring hug.

Coming out of the faint, Mary Malone’s first
words were, “More tea, dears?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Police Chief Chet Henderson sat behind his
desk and Mary Malone sat across from him. It was the day after our
amazing meeting at Mary’s house and she seemed not to have been
adversely affected by all that she’d told us.

Mary sat there as if she had been invited to
an afternoon strawberry social. The Chief offered her tea and she
accepted. Annie Cannon, the Chief’s ever so efficient secretary,
served our hot drinks and a plate of her homemade chocolate pecan
dried cranberry cookies. We all settled in as if ready for a
pleasant talk. However, if Mary was ready and willing to repeat her
story for the Chief, there was unlikely to be a pleasant
out-coming.

Annie, with her notebook on her lap waiting
to take down the discussion; the Chief sitting behind his desk with
the painting of his dear departed wife Trudy hanging on the wall
behind him; Mary in the hot seat; James standing by the desk and I
sitting across the room might have been a tableau of a Norman
Rockwell painting entitled, The Town Sherriff Entertains.

No one was prepared for the Chief’s abrupt
official opening to the meeting.

“Mary, dear, did you kill Edwin?”

“Gracious no. Chester, dear, how could you
entertain such a thought? All right, I must admit that I did
entertain that idea but soon passed on it. After all, I loved the
man, even after he grew to be as nasty as old Ned. No, instead he
did it himself when he jumped. The man was of no use to himself or
anyone else, now was he?”

“But you did kill Estrella Costa, correct?
And Edwin wanted you to kill Emily Sunshine, is that also correct,
Mary, dear?” James and I had gone over every detail of our meeting
the previous day with Mary for the Chief. He was right on top of it
and in his best form regardless of the constant pain he lived
with.

“Oh, dear me, Chester; why don’t we just
forget all this nastiness, shall we? It’s all over now. No good can
come of digging up such old doings. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up
about things that happened so long ago.”

“Oh, how I wish it were that easy, Mary,
dear.”

It seemed to me that Mary’s mental state was
so fragile that at any moment she might just shut down, hidden from
reality in a place where all of the answers we needed would be
forever unavailable to us. As the Chief reached for the bottle of
aspirins and a glass of water, it occurred to me that one more
vital question had to be asked before Mary slipped away from us as
it seemed she might be doing.