A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) (6 page)

“I’m not sure a pinky swear would hold up in a court of law. Anyway, I’m just glad that he was nice. After last summer, with the murder and everything, I’d have expected you to be on your guard a bit more.” He paused. While he’d been talking, Lindsay had begun patting down her body as if she was subjecting herself to an airport security screening. She took off her white coat and turned the pockets inside out. She removed her pager and a pack of Altoids and placed them on the desk. 

“Lose something?” Rob asked, arching an eyebrow.

“My angel pin,” Lindsay said. “You know that silver angel pin that Mrs. Keenan gave me when I first started working here?”

“How could I forget your angel pin? That thing is so tacky it makes the rest of your clothes look hip.”

“I like it,” she said defensively. “And besides it has sentimental value.” Mrs. Keenan had been an early patient of Lindsay’s—one of the first she’d gotten to know well. She’d helped the old woman through her long struggle with breast cancer, and she had given Lindsay the pin as a thank-you gift. Mrs. Keenan had had it engraved to say,
To Lindsay, my very own guardian angel
. Lindsay had worn it every day since, pinned to her shirt.

“You probably dropped it outside,” Rob said. “I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

“Yeah, I hope so,” Lindsay said uncertainly. She took her coat from her locker.

Rob began thumbing through a stack of files on his desk. “So, have you given any more thought to what we talked about the other night?”

Lindsay crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows, “You tease me for being a cougar, violating your sacred pinky swear oath, make fun of my angel pin, and then you have the gall to bring this up?”

“Look,” he continued, “I know you think I haven’t given this any thought, and that I’m just being a coward. And I know chaplains are supposed to be ‘living our truth’ or whatever. I try to do that. If a patient asks me point blank about my personal life, I’ll tell them the truth, even if it means they kick me out of their room. You’ve seen that yourself. I’ve had people report my ‘deviant lifestyle’ to the hospital board and try to get me fired. And I’m sure you remember the time when that cancer-ridden old man, with barely an ounce of strength left in his body, asked me to come close and pray with him, and then turned his head and spit in my face. He’d heard that the hospital was ‘harboring queers.’”

Lindsay put a sympathetic hand on his arm.

“If I thought that it would do any good for my mother to tell her about John, I’d do it, but I really can’t see how it would,” he continued. “My mother isn’t going to change the way she feels, and even if by some miracle she could, it would alienate her from all of her friends back home. I don’t want her to have to choose between me and her church. If I told her, it would only be to make myself feel better. I’m caught between not bearing false witness and not honoring my parents. I’m between a rock and some stone tablets.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry I brought you into this with my stupid lies.”

“I know you’re not a coward. I know you’re walking a hard road. You and John chose to live in Mount Moriah, which doesn’t exactly have a thriving LGBT scene. There’s basically you guys and then that transvestite who works in the gas station.”

“What transvestite?”

“That man who dresses like a woman, but has huge, hairy hands and a face full of stubble.”

“Um, Lins? That’s a woman. I saw her in the maternity ward a few months ago. She had twin girls.”

“Really?” she grimaced. “Well, best of luck to them. They can do wonders with laser hair removal nowadays.”

He smiled at her—the same disarming, twinkly-eyed smile he’d used a million times in the dozen years of their friendship. “So, will you consider it?”

“I’ll consider it,” she said slowly. “But that’s all I’m committing to.” Lindsay’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She looked at the call screen. “It’s Warren.” Rob made a sour face.

“Don’t start,” she cautioned. “Remember, you still need a favor from me. You should be on your best behavior.”

“All right, but as your future husband, I’m not sure I can support you dating another man, especially one as smug and annoying as him.” Rob scurried out the door, narrowly avoiding the packet of post-it notes Lindsay hurled at him as he left.

“Hey,” Lindsay said, catching Warren’s call on the last ring.

“Hey. How was your night shift?” Warren’s voice was raspy and raw.

“Pretty uneventful. How about you? You sound like you pulled an all-nighter. Either that or you up and decided to chain smoke a pack of unfiltered Marlboros.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long night.”

“Hey, I’m sorry about what I said at Rob’s house. All that stuff about Sarabelle caught me off guard. I just hate that she can still get to me, even when she’s not around,” Lindsay said. “Are we still on for lunch today?”

“’Fraid not. That’s why I called.”

Lindsay tried to mask the disappointment in her voice. “It’s okay. I should probably stop by to see my dad anyway. He’s still laid up with that slipped disc. He can hardly get out of bed.”

“Poor guy. It’s a shame that he’ll be alone for Christmas.”

“Oh, he won’t be alone. He’s a handsome, newly-single pastor. It’s hard enough to find any single men around here, but a single Christian man who still has all his hair? He’s not just a catch; he’s the dating equivalent of a 15-pound largemouth bass. Ever since my parents’ divorce was finalized, the middle-aged ladies of Mount Moriah have been practically clawing each other’s eyes out for the chance to cook his supper and clean house for him. Last time I went over there, I almost had to break up a fight between two women from his congregation who’d both brought him homemade Brunswick stew,” Lindsay said. “Anyway, what’s keeping you so busy this close to Christmas?”

“We got some new information about Lydia Sikes’s death. It wasn’t a suicide. That’s for sure.”

“So your hunch was right.”

“Can’t say that I’m too pleased about it. If I’d’a had any inkling about how dangerous Swoopes was, I’d have done my damndest to make sure he stayed locked up. I can’t believe what a close shave you had with that man.”

“We don’t know Swoopes killed her, right?” Lindsay asked.

“All’s I’m saying is, until we figure out who did this, I want you to be careful. With the link between Swoopes and your mother, this whole thing is a little too close to you for my comfort. I’m glad you’re getting out of Mount Moriah for the week.”

“I’ll be fine. Besides, you’re coming out to the Outer Banks for New Year’s Eve, so I’ll have New Albany’s finest as my personal bodyguard.”

Warren paused. “Lins, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I might have to work all week.”

“What?! You swore you’d come no matter what!”

“I know the wedding’s important to you, but at the end of the day, it’s just a party with your friends. A woman’s murder has to take precedence.”

Lindsay thought about Geneva’s advice. If she loved Warren, she shouldn’t say what she was thinking. She shouldn’t tell him that his dedication to work struck her as a form of selfishness, as a way of avoiding living a real life, and, she feared, avoiding really being with her. The angry words boiled up in her throat with such force that she had to physically pinch her lips shut with her fingers for a moment. Finally, she spoke. “You’re right, honey. You’re such a hard worker.”

Warren had seemed poised to smash her words back at her. He sputtered, momentarily disarmed. “Well, this is an important case. There have been major developments.” He paused, going through the usual pantomime of keeping the details of the investigation confidential. He would invariably drop a tantalizing detail and wait for her to press him for more information. Without fail, he would confide in her eventually, using her as a sounding board for theories about the cases he worked, and gleaning new ideas from her fast-firing brain.

“You might as well just tell me,” Lindsay said, refusing to engage with the well-established charade.

“Well,” Warren began, “there were some surprises in the postmortem and the ballistics tests. It appears that a different gun killed Lydia Sikes than what was found with her body.  The bullet that killed her came from an antique Smith and Wesson Model 29, like what Dirty Harry used in the movie. Real big sucker, and they don’t come cheap. We’re talking thousands for one in top condition.

“The gun that was found in her hand was a run-of-the-mill Beretta. The registered owner ran a bait and tackle store in Winston-Salem. But he’s been dead for two years. Nobody’s sure where the Beretta went after that, but generally speaking those guns aren’t hard to come by. You can get a new one down at Walmart for a few hundred dollars—a used one would be even cheaper, and obviously a stolen one would be cheapest of all. So whoever killed her wanted to make it look like suicide, but didn’t want to give up a valuable gun.

“So he put a cheap one in her hand,” Lindsay shuddered involuntarily.

“I believe so,” Warren said. “What I’ve gotta figure out is why anybody’d go through the trouble of making it look like suicide.”

“Maybe all he needed was a smokescreen to buy him a little time.”

“Could be,” Warren agreed. “But time for what?”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Lindsay said, “whether we want to or not.”
 

Chapter 6

Just after 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Lindsay pulled her car up to the front of a small coral-colored house in the historic, restored village of Corolla, North Carolina. Like all dwellings on the Outer Banks, the house had a standard postal address—what Lindsay thought of as its Sunday name, little used and reserved for official business. The house’s real name, the name it used for everyday life, was “Sailor Girl.” Such nicknames emerged from the maritime tradition of naming boats, and could change when the house changed owners. Vacation houses tended to make themselves over every few years—this year’s “Sunchaser” could be next year’s “Ocean Breeze.” Sailor Girl, however, had borne the same name, inscribed in tiny seashells on a wooden plaque, since Lindsay first came to the island as a child.

Low, heavy clouds blanketed the sky, and the gentle hushing sound of the nearby ocean filled the air. As Lindsay approached the house, she could hear the high blue notes of Chet Baker’s trumpet pulsing out the front door. She raised her hand to knock, but before she could, the door was opened by a thin, elderly woman. Colorful, diaphanous scarves and flowing skirts seemed to radiate out from her slender body, giving her the appearance of a maypole. Her youthful white-blonde pixie cut came courtesy of an excellent wigmaker in Florida, and her cherry-red lips were painted with imported French lipstick. “Lindsay! Baby! You’re a sight for my sore old eyes.” She gathered Lindsay into her bony embrace.

“Hi, Simmy.”

During Lindsay’s years living with her aunt, Simmy Bennett had been a welcome presence in her life. She was among the very few people Aunt Harding socialized with, and Lindsay had idolized her. She was a god-awful cook, a hopeless housekeeper, and a spendthrift of epic proportions. Like all ‘Bankers, Simmy was a hard worker, but money seemed to flow through her hands like the outrushing tide. It was only due to the guaranteed income she took in from her several beachfront rental properties that she had been able to avoid bankruptcy.

To Lindsay, Simmy represented a lively contrast to the perpetually sour Aunt Harding. Lindsay had been raised to call adults Sir or Ma’am, not to speak unless spoken to, and to keep her eyes cast down around grownups to show them respect. But Simmy had always insisted that Lindsay call her by her first name. “If we’re gonna be friends, I can’t have you calling me ma’am. I’m not your school teacher, and I’m not your drill sergeant. I’m just plain old Simmy,” she’d told the six-year-old Lindsay the first time they met.

Lindsay and Simmy hadn’t kept in close touch over the years—Simmy never wrote letters, didn’t know the first thing about computers, and was notoriously bad at returning phone calls—but whenever they met, it was as if no time had passed.

Simmy was now in her mid-80s, and when she smiled at Lindsay, her face seemed to crack like an eggshell into a multitude of cross-hatched wrinkles and lines. “What brings you to my doorstep on Christmas Eve? No room at the inn?”

“I’m here for a few days to visit with Aunt Harding. Didn’t she mention I was coming?”

Simmy’s smile remained, but a shadow passed behind her eyes. “No, baby, she must’ve forgotten. Why don’t you come on inside out of the cold?” In truth, it was far from cold. The salty air was almost balmy, and thick with the promise of rain.

Lindsay entered the house and took in the familiar sights—a disused fireplace filled with half-melted pillar candles, a jumble of artwork covering every wall, scarves draped over the lamps, empty wine glasses on the floor. Lindsay shifted a pile of magazines and took a seat on the sofa. “Aunt Harding was supposed to meet me at the bait and tackle store, but she’s not there. I tried calling her, but there’s no answer.

Aunt Harding lived in the northernmost part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, in the 12-mile long stretch of land between Corolla and the Virginia State line known as the 4x4 beaches. When Lindsay moved to the Outer Banks as a child, Highway 12, the main north-south artery, had just been extended from the town of Duck to Corolla. Until that time, there was no real road linking the northerly settlements with the larger enclaves of Nags Head and Kitty Hawk in the south. Before the highway came, Corolla could only be reached by a rutted, clay and sand track that ran parallel to Currituck Sound. The road became impassible in wet weather, and the sugar-fine sand that covered it during dry spells slowly tore apart any cars that it didn’t manage to trap outrigh
t
.
The areas to the north of Duck had been populated by hardy locals and intrepid tourists—all united in relishing the inaccessibility of the place. Once the road was completed, however, gargantuan wooden beach houses, strip malls, and real estate offices spread north like a tropical rash.

A number of real estate speculators had predicted that Highway 12 would eventually be continued up to the Virginia State line, and they laid out a grid of sand roads and housing sites in anticipation. However, the fragile geography and constant flood risk nixed the prospect of a road link once and for all, leaving the isolated northerly settlements accessible only on foot or by four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Despite this, the area continued to be developed in the intervening decades, and hundreds of houses now dotted the strange, roadless landscape. Aunt Harding’s house, squatting behind a row of dunes in the 4x4 area north of the disused lifesaving station at Penny’s Hill, predated the road and the new developments. Her family had been duck hunting guides in Corolla since at least the early 1900s. As far as Lindsay knew, Aunt Harding and her little weather-beaten house had emerged fully formed from the primordial ooze.

Lindsay had waited for Aunt Harding at their accustomed meeting place, the little fishing shop on the edge of town. Her battered Toyota Tercel had met an untimely end the previous summer, and she was now driving an equally ancient Honda Civic that she’d bought from one of her father’s elderly parishioners. Neither car had the capacity to traverse the sand roads in the 4x4 area, so on the rare occasions when Lindsay visited, she either hitched a ride with a passing tourist or waited for her aunt to pick her up in her battered Chevy Silverado. When Aunt Harding still hadn’t appeared more than an hour after their arranged meeting time, Lindsay decided to drop in on Simmy.

“Can I get you anything? I was just having my Christmas Eve dinner,” Simmy said indicating a bottle of wine on the floor.

Lindsay lifted the bottle and saw that it was half empty. “Hmm...Well, I was going to ask you to drive me to Aunt Harding’s in your pickup, but judging by this, I think I might be better off walking.”

Simmy dismissed her objection with a pert wave of her hand. “Oh please, honey. You know that I could perform open heart surgery this very minute.”

Lindsay had to admit that Simmy had an amazing tolerance for alcohol. She had seen the woman out-drink a group of UNC football players who’d rented one of her beach houses one summer. While they were all splayed out on the patio furniture the next morning, Simmy was up at dawn doing calisthenics on the beach.

“Why don’t I make us a pot of coffee?” Lindsay offered. “And we can break into the Christmas cookies I brought.”

“Did you bake them?” Simmy eyed her suspiciously. “No offense, honey, but I still have all my own teeth and I’d like to keep them intact.”

Lindsay accepted the truth of the statement. She had followed her father’s walnut crescent cookie recipe exactly, but she’d still ended up having to scrape burnt bits off the bottoms. “I also made some Jell-O,” she offered. It had required no baking, and was therefore immune to accidental charbroiling. “It’s red and green and in the shape of Christmas bells. It just needs to be chilled for a few minutes before I take it out of the mold.” 

“I don’t want to spoil your Jell-O mold, honey. Let’s just have ourselves some coffee.”

After trying and failing to locate coffee filters, or indeed the coffee pot, Lindsay opted to make two strong cups of Earl Grey tea. Simmy floated around beside her, rearranging a vase of half-dead Gerbera daisies that stood in the middle of the stovetop. “So, how have you been, honey? Are you seeing anyone?”

“I’m still dating that police officer. Didn’t Aunt Harding tell you?”

“A police officer? That’s wonderful! How’s the sex? Does he use handcuffs?”

Lindsay furrowed her brow. “Hold on. When was the last time you spoke to Aunt Harding?”

“Why are you avoiding my question about the handcuffs?”

“Why are you avoiding my question about Aunt Harding? Is everything okay?”

Simmy stared into her teacup, as if an answer might swirl up out of the steam. “To be honest, honey, I don’t think so. Patty is hardly seen in the village these days. She’s almost a recluse. It started at the end of last summer. She always hunkers down during the tourist season, you know, so I didn’t think anything of it at first. She just stocks up on provisions and hides in her house. But even now that the season is over, she rarely surfaces.”

“But
you
must see her? You two are like sisters.” Lindsay couldn’t believe her ears. Simmy had been a frequent visitor at Aunt Harding’s house for as long as anyone could remember. They had been among the handful of children to attend the old one-room schoolhouse in Corolla village. As teenagers, they had braved World War II together, when the whole North Carolina coast was under threat from the German U-boats that menaced the nearby shipping lanes. They had stayed on the island in the war’s aftermath, even as the population of the northern Outer Banks dwindled to almost nothing, and they staunchly remained even after the wild spree of beachfront development took hold. Neither woman had any close family, but they’d always had each other. They represented the old guard, a permanent and inseparable pair. Only, apparently, they weren’t.

“It breaks my heart, but it’s true. I almost called you and your dad a hundred times to tell you what was going on, but I’m not sure there’s anything anyone can do. At first she told me that I should stay away because she was sick, but when I drove out there to check on her, she seemed fit as a fiddle. Matter of fact, she looked positively perky when she shut the door in my face. I even offered to have her move in here, though I know we’d probably murder each other within the week if that were to happen.” She sighed. “You know Patty. Mules cower in the presence of her stubbornness.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

Simmy looked into her cup again, concentrating intently. “Oh, I expect it’s been a good long while now.”

“What do you think is going on? She was acting a little cagey when I talked to her on the phone last week, but that’s pretty normal for her. Could she really be sick or something? Maybe dementia?” Lindsay wracked her brain to find an explanation for her aunt’s troubling behavior.

“I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” Simmy said, her expression darkening. “Her mind seemed as sharp as ever.” Simmy paused and looked intently at Lindsay. “She hasn’t said anything to you? Nothing at all about what’s going on?”

“Not a word. I need to get out there. Are you okay to drive?” Although Lindsay didn’t relish the prospect of trekking two miles in the sand with a large travel backpack, she wasn’t about to get in the car with a tipsy octogenarian.

Simmy proceeded to walk straight ahead along one of the wooden floorboards, her steps unwavering. She then held out her arms and touched her nose with the tips of her fingers. “I can say my alphabet backwards, too, if it’ll satisfy you.”

“No need. Let me just put my stuff in the truck.” Outside, a steady rain had started to fall. Lindsay heaved her backpack into the extended cab of Simmy’s ancient Toyota pickup. She grabbed the tire pressure gauge and flashlight from her car and squatted down alongside the truck. Regular visitors to the 4x4 beaches got used to the constant inflating and deflating of tires; only underinflated tires could be counted on to traverse the sand roads. Lindsay was surprised to find that the pressure of Simmy’s tires was already lowered to the requisite 18 psi. She called out to her, “Simmy! You’ve been driving around on low tires. Didn’t you notice?”

Simmy walked down the front porch steps and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Goodness me! I must’ve forgotten after I came back from beachcombing the other day. Well, it’s handy that they’re already ready to go, I suppose.”             

They drove along Highway 12 through Corolla until the road dead-ended. A fence bisected the island at that point, running from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Currituck Sound in the west. To the north of the fence lay a wilderness of sand, where wild horses that were thought to be descended from Spanish mustangs roamed among the sand dunes, nature preserves, and scattered vacation homes. Before the fence was completed, the horses had been in constant danger of injury from careless drivers and harassment from overly-friendly sightseers, but the barrier now offered them some measure of protection.

Lindsay and Simmy continued through the open gate onto the sand, the noise from the tires changing from a crunch to a shushing. The land north of the fence presented an extreme contrast to the southerly beaches. In places like Kitty Hawk, every buildable lot had been developed. An array of grocery stores, liquor stores, and restaurants catered to the tourists’ every whim. Out here, though, the land maintained a wildness—a covering of live oaks and hardy shrubs shot through with tidal marshes. The island was wider here, more than a mile wide in some places, with little fingers of land stretching out into the Currituck Sound. In the darkness, the road seemed to merge with the gray clouds.