An Open Book (3 page)

“Makes sense.”

Vanessa pulled up in front of Edith’s house and parked on the street. The house was
a trim bungalow, built in the 1920s, and sat on a small, neatly-tended plot of ground
studded with big old rhododendrons. In summer it was rich with roses and brightly
colored annuals. Gardening was one of Edith’s other passions and had also passed as
exercise, keeping her limber.

“Looks normal. Path’s been shoveled,” Vanessa noted.

“I think she hired one of the neighborhood high school kids to do it for her. I can
ask around, see if whoever it was saw her yesterday when they shoveled.”

“She didn’t have a car, did she?”

I shook my head. “She stopped driving a few years ago, I think when she turned eighty.
She realized her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, and besides, she could walk into
town if she needed anything.”

“Wish more of our senior citizens thought that way—a lot of them don’t belong behind
a wheel. You ready?”

“I am. Did you find her keys?”

“In her pocket.”

“No sign of her purse?”

“Not yet. Keep your eyes peeled for it in the house.”

I pondered what the absence of her purse might mean as we made our way up the clean
brick path to the front door. I couldn’t remember seeing her without it, except when
she was gardening in her yard. If Edith hadn’t taken it with her, she couldn’t have
expected to go far or spend much time out. Yet she had her keys on her, so she hadn’t
been dragged out of her house unwillingly. “Have you identified her next of kin?”

“Nope. Maybe there’ll be some useful information in the house. You know anything about
any relatives?” Vanessa fitted the key in the lock. There was both a dead bolt and
a keyed doorknob, I noted, and both were locked. While there was little crime here,
as a woman living alone, Edith had been careful.

“She told me once that she was the last of her family. Her husband died a few years
ago. They never had children. I think she might have had a sister, but she’s gone
too.”

Vanessa opened the door, and we both dutifully stomped off what little snow clung
to our boots on the mat in front of the door before entering. Then we paused to take
in the space.

It was a small house, scrupulously neat and clean. We had stepped straight into the
living room, which had a fireplace in the middle of the end wall. A hallway led off
to the right, and I could see a kitchen running along the back. A staircase rose along
the wall to my right. I wondered if Edith had used an upstairs bedroom, or if the
stairs had proved to be too much for her and her new hip. The furniture I judged to
come from an earlier generation—her parents’? There were framed prints on the walls,
and a few photographs on the mantelpiece. The air smelled faintly of lavender. The
real kind, not the spray kind.

“Where do we start?” I asked Vanessa.

“Let’s try the kitchen. We might find out when she last ate.”

I followed her through the living room into the small kitchen, with a round table
to the right, and a tall hutch against the wall behind it. The counters were clear,
and a few clean dishes sat in the drainer next to the sink. Whatever meal it had been,
Edith—or someone—had tidied up afterwards. “What about the trash? Pickup was yesterday,
so anything in there would have come after eight o’clock in the morning or so.”

Vanessa pulled on a pair of latex gloves and handed me a pair. “Be my guest. Use these.”

“I feel silly,” I said as I put them on. The trash basket was not very revealing.
Edith had obviously taken out her trash on schedule and replaced the bin liner. There
were only a few torn envelopes in it now, from local utilities like electric and phone.
Edith had not graduated to the computer world, so she probably had paid her bills
by check, while sitting at the kitchen table. No doubt her checkbook would be nearby,
unless it was in her purse. Where
was
her purse? I still hadn’t seen it yet.

“Did you see the purse, Van?”

“Not yet. Anything in the trash?”

“Envelopes from bills. I was wondering where her checkbook is.”

Vanessa pointed toward the hutch. “Try the drawers over there.” She turned back to
searching the cupboards.

I pulled open the first drawer to find Edith’s checkbook, along with a roll of stamps,
pad, pencils, pens, stationery, and a small black leather address book, everything
neatly aligned. I took the checkbook and the address book, and sat down at the table.

As I flipped through her check register, I felt as though I was invading her privacy—not
that she’d ever know. “Looks like she paid her bills on time. And balanced her checkbook
regularly. There are deposits from Social Security and what must be her husband’s
pension, and payments for taxes and utilities. No mortgage—she must own the house
outright by now. The current balance is only a few thousand, though, so if she had
savings, they must be somewhere else.” I flipped the pages of the address book. “She’s
had this for a while. Most of the names are crossed out, probably people who have
died.”

“You see a lawyer in there?”

“Uh . . . yes, here’s one in Philadelphia. At least he’s not crossed out. He’s the
only one I see.”

Vanessa held out her hand. “I’ll get in touch with him. Nothing handy in the drawer,
like a note that says ‘in case of emergency notify So-and-So’?”

“Sorry, no. Maybe she’s got another desk somewhere. Anything unusual in the fridge?”

“A couple of soft drinks that seem kind of out of place, but maybe that was a guilty
pleasure. Kinda late to worry about rotting your teeth at eighty-four.”

“What next?” I asked.

“Bathroom. Check the meds.”

“There are some right there.” I pointed to a row of orange pharmacy bottles neatly
lined up on the windowsill over the kitchen sink.

Vanessa picked them up one at a time and read them out loud. “Prescription analgesic,
for arthritis. Coumadin—that must be because of her hip replacement. Allergy pills.
Nothing for blood pressure or diabetes. Pretty ordinary, if you ask me.” Vanessa pulled
a plastic Ziploc bag out of a pocket and put the pill bottles into it. A search of
adjoining cupboards didn’t yield any more bottles. “Bathroom next.”

I dutifully trailed behind her down the short hall. There was a powder room on the
left, and a room on the right that Edith had used as a study.

“I’ll take the bath,” Van said. “You check out the study.”

There was an old-fashioned sofa bed along one wall, and two other walls were lined
with built-in shelves filled with books, mostly older hardcovers, though a couple
of shelves were loaded with more recent paperbacks. In the corner there was a comfortably
worn chair with an ottoman in front of it, and an old standing lamp behind it. I had
a flash of an image of Edith settling into her cozy nook with a favorite book. I scanned
the shelves; the books were arranged by genre, and spanned fiction and non-fiction,
with an emphasis on mysteries. A short row of military histories had probably been
her husband’s. I looked for the library book and didn’t see it. Next to the bed, perhaps?

When I left the room I met Vanessa emerging from the powder room. “Anything?” I asked.

“Nope. She liked fancy soaps, if that means anything. Upstairs now.”

We trudged up the short staircase. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, one on each side,
and a bathroom in between. One room looked like a guest room, with a pretty embroidered
coverlet, but it also looked like it hadn’t been used for a while. I peered into the
closet: summer clothes, neatly hung in plastic bags. The room at the opposite end
was clearly Edith’s bedroom, and again I had to squash the feeling that I was intruding.

Winter clothes hung in the closet, shoes neatly arrayed on the floor. There was a
well-used comb and brush set on the dresser. No lights on anywhere in the house. The
library book was nowhere in evidence. No discarded clothes marred the neatly made
bed. It all looked so normal, as if the house were waiting for its mistress to return,
not knowing that she never would. There was nothing to suggest that she had left in
a hurry, or under duress.

Once again I encountered Vanessa emerging from the bathroom, looking frustrated. “Not
a damn thing out of place,” she said. “Everything hung up and put away. Edith Hathaway
was a serious neat freak!”

“I’m not surprised. She was a former teacher, after all, and she believed in rules
and order. But I didn’t find the library book anywhere.”

“Will you stop whining about that? This is a possible murder investigation.”

I tried to contain my irritation. After all, Vanessa didn’t have many investigations
like this come her way, and she had a right to be nervous about it. “Vanessa, it matters.
Edith took out the book the day before yesterday. I know she was looking forward to
reading it. It’s not here—not downstairs where apparently she did a lot of reading,
and not next to her bed. So where is it? Did she drop it somewhere in the three blocks
between here and the library? Did someone snatch it from her on the street? Did she
lend it to someone?”

“Did anyone tell you you’re obsessive?” When I looked ready to argue, Vanessa held
up both hands. “All right, I get it. It should be here, it’s not here. Maybe it’s
connected to her death, maybe not. How big a bag did she carry? Would a hardcover
fit in it?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes, it would. I’ve seen her slip books in her bag, but not
more than a couple at a time because that would throw off her balance. You’re thinking
that if we find the purse we may find the book?”

“I hope so, if just to stop you from complaining. Did you see anything
else
out of the ordinary in this house?”

“No, I did not. Is it worth calling in the pros to check the place out?”

“I don’t think so. Do you really think they could find anything that you and I can’t?
I’ll ask at the pharmacy if these are all her medications. She had all her prescriptions
filled at the pharmacy in town. Maybe there was a whole shelfful that somebody made
off with. Not that it looks like anybody broke in, however—the doors were both locked,
front and back. I’ll check with the bank to see if she had a safety-deposit box, and
I’ll call that lawyer, although he probably isn’t in his office today. And, so help
me, that’s the best I’ve got.”

“And none of it explains why she put on her coat, put her keys in her pocket, and
walked out the door to end up dead a few miles away.”

“Exactly.”

I checked my watch. “If you don’t need me anymore, I’d better get to the library.”

Vanessa waved me away. “Go. I’m going to take one more look around, and I’ll probably
be at town hall shortly. Oh, keep your ears open—you know how people talk in this
town. Maybe someone saw Edith talking with a mysterious stranger, or getting into
a car.”

“One can but hope. See you later.”

I walked to the library, following the path that must have been very familiar to Edith.
The town was ideal for walking. In fact, it was ideal for our many senior citizens
in general, since it combined everything they might need: grocery, pharmacy, banks,
and a few interesting stores, including a used bookstore, as well as our excellent
small library. I often wondered which had come first—had older people stayed on here
because of those qualities, or because we had so many older people, had the town’s
leaders made sure they had access to what they needed?

I opened up the library, turning on lights and computer terminals, and straightening
up the front desk. On a normal winter Saturday I could expect a couple of high school
kids working on some sort of research project (or just looking for an excuse to get
out of the house and hang with a few friends) and a children’s story group, plus a
smattering of regulars, mostly people who worked full-time and didn’t have time to
stop in to swap books during the week. Today began like any other, but after an hour
or two I noticed a few more people than usual, stopping to talk to each other in hushed
tones in the stacks, or standing in the vestibule just outside. I could easily guess
what they were talking about: Edith’s death. Clearly the news was out. Of course anyone
who had lived in this town for over fifty years, and who had taught school here, and
who had prided herself on being a “character,” would be known to everyone. Better,
she had been well-liked. While she had had a no-nonsense attitude toward life, she
had always been kind to everyone. We should all do so well in our later years.

When no one came over to prod me for insider information, I realized that the word
hadn’t
gone out that I had been the one to find her, for which I was grateful—Vanessa must
be keeping it quiet, and the place where I’d found Edith was so isolated that no one
would have seen the flurry of criminal investigation activity out there except the
Johnsons, who appeared to have been away at the time. I didn’t want to rehash my discovery,
and I was doing my best to stifle any emotional memories, at least for the moment.
I could mourn later, and mourn I would. For all of that, I heard many repetitions
of comments along the lines of, “Terrible thing about Edith, isn’t it?” and I could
only agree. I wondered if she would be buried in Strathmere; if she was, the funeral
would be well-attended.

The pace picked up toward noon, and there were a few people standing in line in front
of the checkout desk, chatting with each other, when I noticed out of the corner of
my eye someone place a hardcover book on the desk and leave. I looked up in time to
see his retreating back. I could tell he was young, maybe high-school age. I glanced
at the book, then looked harder. Yes, it was the book Edith had taken out the day
before she died.

“Wait!” I called out to the departing boy. He didn’t appear to hear me, but nonetheless
moved quickly out the door. “Excuse me,” I said to the startled people in line and
dashed toward the door, trying to intercept him. Outside the building he hurried to
a parked car, jumped into the driver’s seat, and pulled out quickly. Stunned, I belatedly
reminded myself to try to read the license number, and succeeded only in determining
it was not a Pennsylvania plate, and the first three digits were ABG. Not a big help,
but maybe better than nothing.