Murder on the Prowl Page 10

  “Little Mim doesn't have her mother's drive.”

  “Harry, not only do I think she has her mother's drive, I think she'll run for her father's seat once he steps down as mayor.”

  “No way.” Harry couldn't believe the timid woman she had known since childhood could become that confident.

  “Bet you five dollars,” Miranda smugly said.

  “According to Little Mim, the Millers are divorcing.”

  “Oh, dear.” Miranda hated such events.

  “About time.” Harry didn't like hearing of divorce either, but there were exceptions. “Still, there is no such thing as a good divorce.”

  “You managed,” Susan replied.

  “How quickly you forget. During the enforced six months' separation every married couple and single woman in this town invited my ex-husband to dinner. Who had me to dinner, I ask you?”

  “I did.” Miranda and Susan spoke in chorus.

  “And that was it. The fact that I filed for the divorce made me an ogre. He was the one having the damned affair.”

  “Sexism is alive and well.” Susan apportioned out seven-layer salad, one of her specialties. She stopped, utensils in midair. “Did either of you like Roscoe Fletcher?”

  “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” Miranda advised.

  “Speak nothing but good about the dead,” Harry translated although it was unnecessary. “Maybe people said that because they feared the departed spirit was nearby. If they gave you trouble while alive, think what they could do to you as a ghost.”

  “Did you like Roscoe Fletcher?” Susan repeated her question.

  Harry paused. “Yes, he had a lot of energy and good humor.”

  “A little too hearty for my taste.” Miranda found the salad delicious. “Did you like him?”

  Susan shrugged. “I felt neutral. He seemed a bit phony sometimes. But maybe that was the fund-raiser in him. He had to be a backslapper and glad-hander, I suppose.”

  “Aren't we awful, sitting here picking the poor man apart?” Miranda dabbed her lipstick-coated lips with a napkin.

  The phone rang again. Susan jumped up. “Speaking of letting someone rest in peace, I'd like to eat in peace.”

  “You don't have to answer it,” Harry suggested.

  “Mothers always answer telephones.” She picked up the jangling device. “Hello.” She paused a long time. “Thanks for telling me. You've done the right thing.”

  Little Mim had rung back to say St. Elizabeth's had held an emergency meeting by conference call.

  Sandy Brashiers had been selected interim headmaster.

  23

  Late that afternoon, a tired Father Michael bent his lean frame, folding himself into the confessional.

  He usually read until someone entered the other side of the booth. The residents of Crozet had been particularly virtuous this week because traffic was light.

  The swish of the fabric woke him as he half dozed over the volume of Thomas Merton, a writer he usually found provocative.

  “Father, forgive me for I have sinned,” came the formalistic opening.

  “Go on, my child.”

  “I have killed and I will kill again.” The voice was muffled, disguised.

  He snapped to attention, but before he could open his mouth, the penitent slipped out of the booth. Confused, Father Michael pondered what to do. He felt he must stay in the booth for the confessional hours were well-known—he had a responsibility to his flock—but he wanted to call Rick Shaw immediately. Paralyzed, he grasped the book so hard his knuckles were white. The curtain swished again.

  A man's voice spoke, deep and low. “Father forgive me for I have sinned.”

  “Go on, my child,” Father Michael said as his mind raced.

  “I've cheated on my wife. I can't help myself. I have strong desires.” He stopped.

  Father Michael advised him by rote, gave him a slew of Hail Marys and novenas. He kept rubbing his wristwatch until eventually his wrist began to hurt. As the last second of his time in the booth expired, he bolted out, grabbed the phone, and dialed Rick Shaw.

  When Coop picked up the phone, he insisted he speak to the sheriff himself.

  “Sheriff Shaw.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Father Michael. I don't know”—sweat beaded on his forehead; he couldn't violate what was said in the confessional booth—“I believe a murder may have taken place.”

  “One has, Father Michael.”

  The priest's hands were shaking. “Oh, no. Who?”

  “Roscoe Fletcher.” Rick breathed deeply. “The lab report came back. He was poisoned by malathion. Not hard to get around here, so many farmers use it. It works with the speed of light so he had to have eaten it at the car wash. We've tested the strawberry hard candy in his car. Nothing.”

  “There couldn't be any mistake?”

  “No. We have to talk, Father.”

  After Father Michael hung up the phone, he needed to collect his thoughts. He paced outside, winding up in the graveyard. Ansley Randolph's mums bloomed beautifully.

  A soul was in peril. But if the confession he had heard was true, then another immortal soul was in danger as well. He was a priest. He should do something, but he didn't know what. It then occurred to him that he himself might be in danger—his body, not his soul.

  Like a rabbit who hears the beagle pack, he twitched and cast his eyes around the graveyard to the Avenging Angel. It looked so peaceful.

  24

  His shirtsleeves rolled up, Kendrick Miller sat in his favorite chair to read the paper.

  Irene swept by. “Looking for your obituary?” She arched a delicate eyebrow.

  “Ha ha.” He rustled the paper.

  Jody, reluctantly doing her math homework at the dining-room table so both parents could supervise, reacted. “Mom, that's not funny.”

  “I didn't say it was.”

  “Who knows, maybe your obituary will show up.” She dropped her pencil inside her book, closing it.

  “If it does, Jody, you'll have placed it there.” Irene sank gracefully onto the sofa.

  Jody grimaced. “Sick.”

  “I can read it now: ‘Beloved mother driven to death by child—and husband.'”

  “Irene . . .” Kendrick reproved, putting down the paper.

  “Yeah, Mom.”

  “Well”—she propped her left leg over an embroidered pillow—“I thought Roscoe Fletcher could have sold ice to Eskimos and probably did. He was good for St. Elizabeth's, and I'm sorry he died. I was even sorrier that we were all there. I would have preferred to hear about it rather than see it.”

  “He didn't look bad.” Jody opened her book again. “I hope he didn't suffer.”

  “Too quick to suffer.” Irene stared absently at her nails, a discreet pale pink. “What's going to happen at St. Elizabeth's?”

  Kendrick lifted his eyebrows. “The board will appoint Sandy Brashiers headmaster. Sandy will try to kill Roscoe's film-course idea, which will bring him into a firefight with Maury McKinchie, Marilyn Sanburne, and April Shively. Ought to be worth the price of admission.”

  “How do you know that?” Jody asked.

  “I don't know it for certain, but the board is under duress. And the faculty likes Brashiers.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Father Michael can see us tomorrow at two thirty.”

  “Irene, I have landscaping plans to show the Doubletree people tomorrow.” He was bidding for the hotel's business. “It's important.”

  “I'd like to think I'm important. That this marriage is important,” Irene said sarcastically.

  “Then you pay the bills.”

  “You turn my stomach.” Irene swung her legs to the floor and left.

  “Way to go, Dad.”

  “You keep out of this.”

  “I love when you spend the evening at home. Just gives me warm fuzzies.” She hugged herself in a mock embrace.

  “I ought to—” He shut up.

  “Hit me. Go ahea
d. Everyone thinks you gave me the shiner.”

  He threw the newspaper on the floor. “I've never once hit you.”

  “I'll never tell,” she goaded him.

  “Who did hit you?”

  “Field hockey practice. I told you.”

  “I don't believe you.”

  “Fine, Dad. I'm a liar.”

  “I don't know what you are, but you aren't happy.”

  “Neither are you,” she taunted.

  “No, I'm not.” He stood up, put his hands in his pockets. “I'm going out.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't want to stay home with her.”

  “You haven't finished your homework.”

  “How come you get to run away and I have to stay home?”

  “I—” He stopped because a determined Irene reentered the living room.

  “Father Michael says he can see us at nine in the morning,” she announced.

  His face reddening, Kendrick sat back down, defeated. “Fine.”

  “Why do you go for marriage counseling, Mom? You go to mass every day. You see Father Michael every day.”

  “Jody, this is none of your business.”

  “If you discuss it in front of me, it is,” she replied flippantly.

  “She's got a point there.” Kendrick appreciated how intelligent his daughter was, and how frustrated. However, he didn't know how to talk to her or his manipulative—in his opinion—wife. Irene suffocated him and Jody irritated him. The only place he felt good was at work.

  “Dad, are you going to give St. E's a lot of money?”

  “I wouldn't tell you if I were.”

  “Why not?”

  “You'd use it as an excuse to skip classes.” He half laughed.

  “Kendrick”—Irene sat back on the sofa—“where do you get these ideas?”

  “Contrary to popular opinion, I was young once, and Jody likes to—” He put his hand out level to the floor and wobbled it.

  “Learned it from you.” Jody flared up.

  “Can't we have one night of peace?” Irene wailed, unwilling to really examine why they couldn't.

  “Hey, Mom, we're dysfunctional.”

  “That's a bullshit word.” Kendrick picked his paper up. “All those words are ridiculous. Codependent. Enabler. Jesus Christ. People can't accept reality anymore. They've invented a vocabulary for their illusions.”

  Both his wife and daughter stared at him.

  “Dad, are you going to give us the lecture on professional victims?”

  “No.” He buried his nose in the paper.

  “Jody, finish your homework,” Irene directed.

  Jody stood up. She had no intention of doing homework. “I hated seeing Mr. Fletcher dead. You two don't care. It was a shock, you know.” She swept her books onto the floor; they hit with thuds equal to their differing weights. She stomped out the front door, slamming it hard.

  “Kendrick, you deal with it. I was at the car wash, remember?”

  He glared at her, rolled his paper up, threw it on the chair, and stalked out.

  Irene heard him call for Jody. No response.

  25

  “You cheated!” Jody, angry, squared off at Karen Jensen.

  “I did not.”

  “You didn't even understand Macbeth. There's no way you could have gotten ninety-five on Mr. Brashiers's quiz.”

  “I read it and I understand it.”

  “Liar.”

  “I went over to Brooks Tucker's and she helped me.”

  Jody's face twisted in sarcasm. “She read aloud to you?”

  “No. Brooks gets all that stuff. It's hard for me.”

  “She's your new best friend.”

  “So what if she is?” Karen tossed her blond hair.

  “You'd better keep your mouth shut.”

  “You're the one talking, not me.”

  “No, I'm not.”

  “You're weirding out.”

  Jody's eyes narrowed. “I lost my temper. That doesn't mean I'm weirding out.”

  “Then why call me a cheater?”

  “Because”—Jody sucked in the cool air—“you're on a scholarship. You have to make good grades. And English is not your subject. I don't know why you even took Shakespeare.”

  “Because Mr. Brashiers is a great teacher.” Karen Jensen glanced down the alleyway. She saw only Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, strolling through Mrs. Hogendobber's fall garden, a riot of reds, rusts, oranges, and yellows.

  Taking a step closer, Jody leaned toward her. “You and I vowed to—”

  Karen held up her hands, palms outward. “Jody, chill out. I'd be crazy to open my mouth. I don't want anyone to know I went to bed with a guy this summer, and neither do you. Just chill out.”

  Jody relaxed. “Everything's getting on my nerves . . . especially Mom and Dad. I just want to move out.”

  Karen noticed the tiger cat coming closer. “Guess everyone feels that way sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” Jody replied, “but your parents are better than mine.”

  Karen didn't know how to answer that, so she said, “Let's go in and get the mail.”

  “Yeah.” Jody started walking.

  Pewter and Murphy, now at the backdoor of the post office, sat on the steps. Pewter washed her face. Mrs. Murphy dropped her head so Pewter could wash her, too.

  “Didn't you think the newspaper's write-up of Roscoe's death was strange?” Murphy's eyes were half closed.

  “You mean the bit about an autopsy and routine investigation?”

  “If he died of a heart attack, why a routine investigation? Mom better pump Coop when she sees her—and hey, she hasn't been in to pick up her mail for the last two days.”

  “Nothing in there but catalogs.” Pewter took it upon herself to check out everyone's mailbox. She said she wasn't being nosy, only checking for mice.

  Shouting in the post office sent them zipping through the animal door.

  They crossed the back section of the post office and bounded onto the counter. Both Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber were in the front section as were Jody, an astonished Samson Coles, and Karen Jensen. Tucker was at Harry's feet, squared off against Jody. The animals had arrived in the middle of an angry scene.

  “You're the one!”

  “Jody, that's enough,” Mrs. Hogendobber, aghast, admonished the girl.

  Samson, his gravelly voice sad, said quietly, “It's all right, Miranda.”

  “You're the one sleeping with Mom!” Jody shrieked.

  “I am not having an affair with your mother.” He was gentle.

  “Jody, come on. I'll ride you home.” Karen tugged at the tall girl's sleeve, at a loss for what to do. Her friend exploded when Samson put his arm around her shoulders, telling her how sorry he was that the headmaster had died.

  “You cheated on Lucinda—everyone knows you did—and then Ansley killed herself. She drove her Porsche into that pond because of you . . . and now you're fucking my mother.”

  “JODY!” Mrs. Hogendobber raised her voice, which scared everyone.

  Jody burst into tears and Karen pushed her out the front door. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Hogendobber and Mr. Coles. I'm sorry, Mrs. Haristeen. She's, uh . . .” Karen couldn't finish her thought. She closed the door behind her.

  Samson curled his lips inward until they disappeared. “Well, I know I'm the town pariah, but this is the first time I've heard that I caused Ansley's death.”

  A shocked Miranda grasped the counter for support. “Samson, no one in this town blames you for that unstable woman's unfortunate end. She caused unhappiness to herself and others.” She gulped in air. “That child needs help.”

  “Help? She needs a good slap in the face.” Pewter paced the counter.

  Tucker grumbled. “Stinks of fear.”

  “They can't smell it. They only trust their eyes. Why, I don't know—their eyes are terrible.” Mrs. Murphy, concerned, sat at the counter's edge watching Karen force Jody into
her car, an old dark green Volvo.

  “We'd better call Irene,” Harry, upset, suggested.

  “No.” Samson shook his head. “Then the kid will think we're ganging up on her. Obviously, she doesn't trust her mother if she thinks she's having an affair with me.”

  “Then I'll call her father.”

  “Harry, Kendrick's no help,” Mrs. Hogendobber, rarely a criticizer, replied. “His love affair with himself is the problem in that family. It's a love that brooks no rivals.”

  This made Harry laugh; Miranda hadn't intended to be funny, but she had hit the nail on the head.

  Samson folded his arms across his chest. “Some people shouldn't have children. Kendrick is one of them.”

  “We can't let the child behave this way. She's going to make a terrific mess.” Miranda added sensibly, “Not everyone will be as tolerant as we are.” She tapped her chin with her forefinger, shifting her weight to her right foot. “I'll call Father Michael.”

  Samson hesitated, then spoke. “Miranda, what does a middle-aged priest know of teenage girls . . . of women?”

  “About the same as any other man,” Harry fired off.

  “Touché,” Samson replied.

  “Samson, I didn't mean to sound nasty. You're probably more upset than you're letting on. Jody may be a kid, but a low blow is a low blow,” Harry said.

  “I could leave this town where people occasionally forgive but never forget. I think about it, you know, but”—he jammed his hands in his pockets—“I'm not the only person living in Crozet who's made a mistake. I'm too stubborn to turn tail. I belong here as much as the next guy.”

  “I hope you don't think I'm sitting in judgment.” Miranda's hand fluttered to her throat.

  “Me neither.” Harry smiled. “It's hard for me to be open-minded about that subject, thanks to my own history . . . I mean, BoomBoom Craycroft of all people. Fair could have picked someone—well, you know.”

  “That was the excitement for Fair. That BoomBoom was so obvious.” Samson realized he'd left his mail on the counter. “I'm going back to work.” He scooped his mail up before Pewter, recovering from the drama, could squat on it. “What I really feel bad about is tampering with the escrow accounts. That was rotten. Falling in love with Ansley may have been imprudent, but it wasn't criminal. Betraying a responsibility to clients, that was wrong.” He sighed. “I've paid for it. I've lost my license. Lost respect. Lost my house. Nearly lost Lucinda.” He paused again, then said, “Well, girls, we've had enough soap opera for one day.” He pushed the door open and breathed in the crisp fall air.