Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly (12 page)

I trudged up the stairs to my room
and found the message light shining on my phone answering machine.  I hit the
play button.  More pleas from the media, several blanks where someone had
called but hadn’t left a message, then Fran’s slightly slurred, laughing voice
said, “So you took my advice, huh?  Little devil, you.”  She giggled 
“Lizzie, I’ve been sleuthing!  Discretion demands I wait to tell you in
person.”

She giggled again.  “Slip Meg
a mickey so she’ll sleep in, willya?  I’m unplugging my phone and getting my
beauty sleep.  Too bad my looks will be wasted on a rock wall.  Can we go
someplace fun after?  Like New Zealand?”  A big yawn.  “See you in
the morning, Piggelty.”

The message had been left at
12:25, so I figured she might still be awake and dialed her, but the phone just
kept ringing, so I knew she had unplugged it.  She really was determined to get
her beauty sleep.

“See you in the morning,
Higgelty,” I said as I dropped onto my bed.

I woke up just before the alarm
went off at seven and soon discovered Meg was gone.

She’d rinsed out Grandmother
McDowell’s quilt, but she hadn’t left a note for me.  Was she so angry she
planned to cut me out of the climbing gym expedition and go straight to Fran?

Well, she’d have a shock there! 
Hell had no fury like Fran wakened from slumber.

I grabbed my bag.  I’d call Mother
from the airport.  She could arrange for Jill Ferguson to help her while I was
gone.

I drove toward Fran’s, noticing a
tall aluminum ladder propped against the brick facade of the church.  Sheila
stood in the doorway of her restaurant helping an old man make it up the step. 
Kirk, dressed in red sweats, stood next to the frail wife.  I loved this little
town where people woke with the sun.  Even if, this morning, the sun was hiding
behind a sullen fog.

As I waited at the signal at
Parkway, I saw Alisz, bundled against the chill, walking south, back toward her
home.  I wished I had her discipline.  Running was a hit-or-miss affair with
me, walking daily a passion for her.  A white Cabriolet stood in the library’s
lot.  I made sure it was Laurel’s, not Meg’s.  As I passed the post office, I
saw Gene’s green pickup turn toward the police station.

My spirits plummeted when I
reached The Bird.  Meg’s car was not there.  Had she already picked Fran up? 
No, Fran wouldn’t go without calling me.

Meg would show up.  Even if she
was mad at me, she wouldn’t exclude Fran.  She’d be here any minute.

I walked back along the building. 
Moisture beaded the glossy finish of Fran’s black Mustang.  I rang her doorbell
and waited.  I rang again.  I knocked, then used my key.  “Ollie, ollie,
oxen free,” I called, opening the door just a crack so that anything she threw
could not hit me.

Silence.  Maybe Fran had gone with
Meg?

“Darn it,” I said,
pushing the door wider.  It stopped with a little thud after opening only a few
inches.  I looked down to see a pale hand with long, slender fingers and
shell-pink nails.  “Fran!” I cried and pushed the door.  It bumped
again, and I realized with horror it was bumping against her head.

“Fran,” I sobbed.  I
leaned down and reached around the door, pushing at her cool, bony shoulder. 
The door opened wider.  I slid through.

Fran lay nude, face down.  Her
hair spread in a golden mantle across her back.  I sank to my knees.  I knew, I
already knew, but I touched her wrist, felt for the pulse that wasn’t there.

My hand went to her upper arm to
turn her over, but it drew back when my shocked senses registered the purplish
hue of her face, chest, and stomach.

Tears blurred my eyes. 
“Fran, please, please—”  I had to call someone, but who?  She was
dead, an ambulance wouldn’t help.  I got up to go to the phone on the end
table.  But I couldn’t leave Fran like that.  I lifted the peach duvet from
where it lay half-on, half-off the couch-bed.  I let it float down onto her.

I felt sick.  I rushed into the
bathroom, tripping over the navy slacks and sweater and undies she’d left in
the middle of the floor yesterday.  I stumbled a few steps and fetched up hard
against the wall.  I took a deep breath, and the nausea faded.

I walked back across the room,
stopping when I noticed my glass of Scotch sitting on the dressing table where
Fran had left it yesterday.

I reached over all the little pink
jars and bottles and tubes, grabbed the glass, and took a big swallow.  The
Chivas made a warm track to my stomach while the rest of me stayed cold.  I
shivered.

The telephone shrilled.  I walked
to it.  I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear.  A strange voice
whispered, “How does it feel?”

“What?” I said.

“You heard me.  How does it
feel?”

“Fran’s dead,” I
protested.  My knees turned to mush, and I sat on the side of the bed.

The person on the other end made a
funny sound.  A laugh quickly stifled?  No, it couldn’t be that.  It must be a
gasp of surprise, of shock.

The phone went dead.  Obviously
someone intending to play a prank on a friend had dialed the wrong number and
had hung up in dismay.

I watched my shaking hand reach
out, over the glossy brochures promoting New Zealand, to punch 9-1-1.

Eventually I heard sirens.  I
realized that people would be coming in by the door, bumping Fran.  I closed
and locked it, then went to the door that led into The Bird’s office, and
unlocked that.  I walked through the cool, quiet office, and out the paper’s
front door.

Two police cars screeched into the
parking lot.  Gene, in the passenger seat of one, jumped out and ran towards
me.  “Where?” he demanded.

I stared at the ambulance pulling
more decorously into the parking lot.

Gene’s hands took a bruising grip
of my shoulders.  “Liz, where is she?”  His voice quivered with
tension.

I pointed.

He took off.

The ambulance people unloaded
equipment.  They seemed to be taking a long time.  I thought that if someone
were dying, it might even be too long a time.

I turned and followed quietly
after Gene.  I couldn’t leave Fran alone with them.

Gene knelt beside her body,
touching her neck.  His shoulders trembled, then he went still.

Footsteps, voices, creaking
leather, clanking, and suddenly the room was full of cops and paramedics.

I sat on the arm of a chair
keeping an eye on them all.

A man started pounding on the
apartment door and yelling, “Fran, Fran!”  It was probably Max, The
Bird’s only full-time reporter.

Gene surged to his feet and
roared, “Godammit!  What’re you all doing in here?  Isn’t there anyone out
there keeping people away?  What the hell’s wrong with you?”  His finger
stabbed at Lofty.  “Get out there now!”

More time passed while people
spoke in soft voices and moved about, writing things down, going out, coming
in.  A woman wearing thick glasses and carrying a big case arrived and
consulted with Gene.  She put her case down and opened it.

Gene came over, “Liz, you
need to go outside now.”

“No.”

“You can’t do anything for
Fran here.”

The woman had put on gloves and
was taking things out of her case.  I stared, my throat convulsing.

Gene leaned down, bringing his
strained face close to mine.  “All that’s left is details,” he said
in a calm, quiet voice.  “Fran’s not here, Liz, and all we can do for her
is find out why she died.”

“I don’t want her to be
dead.”

“I know.  Come on.”

“What are they going to do to
her?”

“It won’t help to know.”

Officer Millay called from the
office doorway, “Gene, come look at this.”  Millay led us to the
table provided for the paper’s clients to sit at to compose ads.  James’
antique Underwood had been taken out of its display case.  A piece of paper had
been rolled into it, and typed onto the paper, in faint, greyish ink, were the
words, “I can no longer live with what I have done.”

Gene whistled.

Millay said, “Looks like
Andre’s homicide is solved.”

“No!” I said. 
“No!”

“Now, Liz—”

Rage sliced through my shock like
a sword through a shroud.  “Fran didn’t do it.  Don’t you dare do this to
her.”  I glared at them.

“Liz, we have to investigate
every possibility.”

“But you’ll start from the
wrong premise.  Someone killed Fran.  They murdered her,” I stopped as a
sob caught in my throat.  I gathered a deep breath.  “It was impossible
for her to commit suicide.”

Millay said doubtfully, “You
think because of religious reasons—”

I laughed, the sound startling. 
“Fran was the least religious person I know.  But, you see, whoever killed
her didn’t know her very well—he’s made a mistake.  She was terrified of being
dead.  Even if I believed she’d kill Andre, I know she couldn’t kill herself.”

Their faces still showed doubt.

“What’s more, she wouldn’t
have used James’ typewriter, and you know yourself that except for working
notes, she couldn’t leave a written message at one sentence.”  I waved my
fingers at the note.  “If she’d really written this, it would’ve been
several pages long at least.”

A grin split Gene’s face then
quickly died.  He and Millay looked at each other.  Gene said to Millay,
“Make sure no one touches this or the case until they’re dusted.  Keep on
top of things.  I’ll be back in a few minutes.”  He pulled me toward the
door and past Officer Hicks’ rigid back.

The fog had thinned enough to
cause a nasty glare.

Max Williams accosted us. 
“Is it true?  Is Fran dead?” he asked.  His jeans and T-shirt were
rumpled, his gingery hair on end, and a crusty white trail of sleep tracked down
his left cheek.

“We’ll answer your questions
later,” Gene said, still pulling me.

The crowd gathered around the
emergency vehicles parted to let us through.  Gene ignored the questions hurled
at him as he hustled me into one of the police cars, turned north, drove half a
mile, and pulled onto the shoulder of the road next to three cedar trees. 
Silence enveloped us except for the swish of grass as a couple of cows ambled
away from us.

He turned toward me.  “You’re
right about the note.  That’s not Fran’s style at all.”  His hand smoothed
the moustache over the thin, arrogant mouth.  “I don’t know about the
rest.”  He held up a large hand as I began to speak.  “For the
moment, I’ll take your word for it.”

His fingers scrubbed through his
red hair.  He sighed.  “If she didn’t die of natural causes—”

“She was perfectly
healthy—”

“Except for her allergy to
penicillin,” he said.

“But she’d never take any of
that!  She knew how deadly it was to her—she wore that silver bracelet every
moment of her life.”

“But we can’t rule that out
until after the autopsy.”

“Not an autopsy,” I
protested.  “Oh, Gene, you don’t know how frightened she was of that. 
Please, can’t you protect her?”

“I can’t, Liz.”

“Her uncle used to tell
stories about the bodies, the things they did, what they said, the horrible
jokes.  Oh, God—” my eyes filled with tears.

“The best I can do is attend
the autopsy.  I’ll make sure they treat her—” his voice guttered out and
tears filled his eyes, too.  He swiped them away with his wrist.  “I’ll
make sure they do it by the book, that there aren’t any jokes.”

I touched the cold, white-knuckled
hand that gripped the steering wheel.  “Thanks, Gene.”

He nodded.

We sat silently.  He wasn’t in
uniform this morning.  He wore a blue flannel shirt with jeans.  A nick from
this morning’s shave marked the side of his jaw underneath the muscles that
bunched, relaxed, and bunched again.

A couple of raucous crows erupting
suddenly from trees further up the road broke the spell of silence.

“I don’t know what’s going
on, Liz,” he said.  “I’m going to assume for the moment that if Fran
was murdered, it has something to do with Andre’s murder and with what she did
when she disappeared from the library.  If you know where she went and what she
did, you’ve got to tell me now.”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

He looked at me speculatively.  He
took a deep breath and slowly released it.  I caught the minty scent of
toothpaste.  “Liz, you’re the one who’s discovered both bodies.”

I jerked in surprise.  I drew away
from him, the armrest digging into my back as I twisted on the seat to face
him.  “You’ve known me all your life.  You can’t think I’d—”

“After awhile in this
business, you can believe anything of anybody, but no, not you.  But I can’t
ignore the fact that you were the one to find both Andre and Fran.  Why?”

I shrugged.

“Look at it this way: 
someone had a motive to kill Andre.  If Fran was murdered, someone had a motive
to kill her.  If the same person did both those killings, maybe that someone
also had a motive to involve you.”  He scrubbed at his hair in
frustration.  “Did someone arrange for you to find them?”

Nausea roiled in my stomach.  I
opened the car door and got out.  I breathed in the sweet scent of grass and
the tang of the cedars.

Gene came to stand near me,
resting a hip against the patrol car.  “Anyone in the play would have
known that the person in your role would find Andre.  But it should have been
Annamaria who found him; it was an accident that you were there in her
place.”

He stopped, a startled expression
on his face.  “Unless her death … unless she was killed so that you…”  He straightened and looked at me, his blue eyes fierce, “Who knew
you’d be at Fran’s this morning?  Who’s out to get you, Liz?”

Meg.

For a moment I was terrified I’d
said it aloud, but Gene continued to watch me, waiting for an answer.  I turned
away, taking a few steps along the road, watching the black-and-white cows
tearing at the grass.

I couldn’t believe Meg would plot
anything this ugly, that she could kill Fran or possibly want to hurt me like
this, but she was the only one who knew my plans for this morning.  We’d kept
it a secret between the three of us that we were going to the climbing gym.  It
would have driven Alisz nuts to think that her actors were chancing a broken
ankle on the biggest day of the fund-raiser.

I shivered.  Maybe, maybe, Meg
could have killed Andre, but she couldn’t have hurt Fran.  But who else knew
I’d be there to find Fran?

“If you’re right—”

Gene said, “For the moment, let’s
go with it and see where it leads.  Who knew you’d be here this morning?”

“No one.”

“Why did you come so early?  Fran
hated to get up early.”

What was Gene going to find out
anyway?  What could I combine with that to make a plausible lie?  And then I
had it—the truth would serve.

“We were planning to go to New Zealand.”

“What?”  His face turned red. 
“Dammit, Liz, I told you both you couldn’t leave town.”

“Actually, you didn’t.”

“Oh, jeez.”  He glared down at
me.  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of.  I’d have had to get you
extradited or whatever, and the evidence against you would look twice as bad. 
That could get you hung in this state, you know!”

“Hanged.”

“Godammit, Liz!”

“You don’t need to swear.”

Silence fell between us.

If I’d responded to Fran’s red-hot
desire instead of my grey caution, we’d have been on a plane over the Pacific
right now.

Gene took a faded bandanna out of
his pocket and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, dabbing at my
eyes.

Gene shifted restlessly.  “I
should get back.”

“Okay,” I said, reaching for the
handle.  The sun broke through, highlighting a long streak on the window.

He didn’t move but said in a low
voice, “Maybe I should call in someone else to investigate.”

“Someone with more experience?”

“Millay and I are well trained,
and the others are no slouches.”  He frowned, “Of course, Lofty’s got a lot to
learn—”

While Gene worked on his problem,
my mind wandered.  Fran was so secretive about what she did Thursday night. 
I’d never seen her like that.  If I knew where she’d gone, then maybe I’d have
a link between the two murders.

What hadn’t she wanted me to
know?  And why?

Gene’s monologue snagged my
attention.  “This is my town, my case.”

In the bright sunshine the lines
around his eyes were as apparent as the strands of grey hair at his temples.

“So what are you going to do?”

He sighed.  “Well, first, let’s go
through the people who were there when Andre died.  You tell me if any of them
had a reason for wanting you to be the one to find Andre and/or Fran dead. 
Let’s see, how about Laurel or Sybil?”

“I don’t see why.  Sybil became
director after I stopped working for the library system.  We don’t know each
other.  There was another librarian between me and Laurel.”

“She put a hell of a lot of time
into the play.”

Remembering what I’d seen
yesterday, I said, “Maybe it was just an excuse to spend time with Victor?”

Gene shrugged.  “Depends on who
was recruited first, doesn’t it?  Did Laurel know Victor had a role?”

“I approached Laurel with the
offer to write the play months ago.  She asked me to include a small part for
her.  I don’t think Victor was cast yet.  You’d have to ask Alisz, she’s the
one who’s been in charge of production.”

“What about Victor, you have any
dealings with him?”

“No.  I’d seen him at community
theatre plays, but I’d never talked with him until dress rehearsal.”  I
hesitated, rubbed my thumb against the streak on the window.

“What?”

“Sheila says Victor’s violent with
his wife.”

“Yeah.”

I shivered at the disinterest in
his tone.  Or was it matter-of-factness, his daily lot in life to deal with
volatile domestic situations?

“Okay, how about Alisz?  She had
plenty of reason to hate you.  Maybe Jared believes in feuds?”

I looked down at the lapis lazuli
and gold bracelet on my left wrist and fingered the cracked stone.  I glanced
up at Gene.  He looked grim. 

It must be really hard on him to
suspect people he’d grown up with.  “Why would she hate me?  She’s the one who
ended up with Hugh.”

“After you threw him back into the
pond.”

I shrugged.  “If anything, you’d
think she’d be grateful to me, then, wouldn’t you?  She did really well for
herself.”

A sly grin stretched his mouth. 
“You never did much like her, did you?”

“I’ve always been nice to her,” I
protested.

“Yeah, I remember when she was a
kid she dressed in a lot of your hand-me-downs,” he said.

“That was Mother’s idea, not
mine.  It embarrassed both Alisz and me.  It was a cruel thing to do in a town
this small.”

Both of us were quiet for a moment
remembering the bow-legged little girl with the big hazel eyes who’d arrived in
the middle of second grade.  Her parents were refugees, and the only word of
English Alisz spoke at first was “pleezz” with a huge question mark after it. 
She’d been teased unmercifully.  Her home life hadn’t provided any
respite—she’d had to take care of two younger brothers and a sister as her
mother went mad.

Gene kicked at a rock and it
rolled into the ditch.

“I’ve always respected her,” I said. 
“She’s worked so hard for what she wanted.”

“You mean Hugh?”

“Not just that, although her
campaign would have made Napoleon proud, but going into the travel business
with Annamaria, managing Hugh’s medical practice.  She’s always going into a
new business venture and making a profit.”

“What about Jared?”

I shrugged.  “I’ve always gotten
along with him.”

“Even when you tried to stop him
from dating Meg?”

“That was blown out of all
proportion!”

“Don’t get mad, Liz, just think.”

I took a deep breath.  “I was
afraid they were going to get married right out of high school.”

“Do you think Jared understood?”

“Not then, he was pretty angry. 
But after Meg went east to college, he started dropping by.  We’ve become
friends, sort of.”

“Who’s left?” he mused.  “Kirk and
Meg.  I suppose you’re going to say neither could possibly wish you harm.”

“That’s right.”  Though I couldn’t
help thinking of what Fran had told me about Kirk.

“I can see why you’d say that
about your niece, but what about Kirk?  Excused on religious grounds?”

“Pretty much.”

“Do you like him?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you think he likes you?”

I shrugged.  “Priests have to like
everyone.  So in that way, I suppose he does.”  I walked back to the front of
the car and gazed down the narrow road to where it dipped to the creek.

The grass swished as Gene followed
me.  “What bothers you about him?”

“I don’t know.  I guess—somehow I
feel accused of something by him.”

“What?”

“I’ve never thought about it
before, but since you asked me, that’s the best description I can give.”

I thought of his reaction to
Annamaria’s death and the intense way he’d asked after Meg yesterday.  I
remembered how strong he was, that he’d been up this morning when I’d passed
the church.  If he’d cared to keep track of any of us, puttering around the
church would have given him a ringside seat to observe Macrae comings and
goings.

“I’ve gotta get back.”  Gene
opened the passenger door.  “Get in.”

“I’ll walk back to The Bird,” I
said.

“No.  You need to tell me what you
did when you got there this morning.”

An icy chill swept over me. 
Fran’s
dead.
  It had receded while I stood in the sunshine talking to Gene.  I
slumped into the police car.

In silence he took me back to
Fran’s.

Officer Millay spoke quietly with
Gene for several minutes when we got there.  Gene slapped him on the shoulder
and said, “Good work.”

He came around the car and opened
the door for me.  He led me into the lobby of the newspaper office saying,
“Okay, Liz, let’s get this over with as quickly as we can.”  His brisk tone
meant it was business:  him cop, me witness.

After I’d described my actions, we
stood still in the midst of the coming and going of his troops.

He sighed.  “So anything else
happen while you were here alone?”

“No, I’ve told you—wait!  The
phone rang.”

“Before you called 9-1-1?”

“Yes.  I was just going to do
it.”  I sagged into one of the upholstered chairs.  “The voice said, ‘How does
it feel?’”

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged.  “I don’t know.  He
said it twice.”

“You’re saying ‘he.’  So it was a
man?”

I thought.  “I don’t know.  It was
muffled, strange, hard to understand—”

“If you heard the voice again,
would you know it?”

“I don’t know.”  I rubbed my
forehead.  “Maybe.”  I shifted.  “I just don’t—”

“Do you think whoever it was
thought they were talking to Fran?”

I shivered.  “They laughed when I
said Fran was dead.”

“You’re sure?”

I thought back.  I wrapped my arms
around myself.  “I don’t know.”

He sighed again and sat in the
chair next to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” he said, patting me
on the back as if I were a child.  “When did you turn off the alarm here in the
office?”

“I didn’t,” I said.  “I never
thought of it.  Doesn’t that mean that somebody—”

“We don’t know what it means,
yet.”  He rubbed his hands together.

“Oh, the phone—” I said.  I
clutched his soft flannel sleeve.

“The phone?”

“Fran unplugged it last night.”

“How do you know?”

“She said she was going to, and
then I tried to get hold of her and couldn’t.  She must have unplugged it.”  I
stared at him.  “How could it ring this morning?”

He shook his head.  “We’ll check
it out.  You’d better go now,” he said.  “Don’t tell anyone the details you’ve
told me, okay?”

I nodded.

Sharply, he said, “You can’t trust
anyone right now.  Do you realize that?”

I stared blankly into his intense
blue eyes.  “All right,” I said, my voice small.

“Come in and give a formal
statement later.”

The sun blasted into my face as I
stepped out of the office.  I stopped and groped in my purse for my sunglasses.

About twenty people stood in the
parking lot beyond the police cars.  A couple of kids were weaving around the
crowd on their skateboards as I walked to my car.

I collapsed on the seat and rolled
down the window.

Fran’s cold, slack body lay in the
back of the coroner’s van that was pulling out of the parking lot and driving
away from me.

As I watched the van turn the
corner, shock and listlessness burned away.  Anger filled me like molten
metal.  Someone had murdered Fran.  Someone was going to pay.