Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Read online

  “We’re talking,” I huffed, struggling to keep pace with her younger legs, “but there are issues. We’ll see.”

  Emma rolled her eyes at me. Her brown irises flecked with green were another of our shared traits. “By the time you two get through hashing out your issues, you’ll be sharing a room at the old folks’ home and driving the nurses crazy. It’s been more than five years, ‘Cita. Face it, you’re stuck with each other.”

  “What you mean is, at this point no one else would have either one of us.”

  Emma prudently didn’t comment. “Armando’s got his kinks, but you’re no walk in the park either. When you come right down to it, everybody has their little weirdnesses. You always told me that the only thing that matters in a relationship is that you can live with his kinks, and he can live with yours. So, do you think you can?

  “Hard to say,” I commented tersely, trying to conserve my oxygen. “He likes the TV and music on all the time, and I like silence. He’s a packrat, I’m neat.” Pant, pant. “He sleeps late and stays up late, and I’m up at five-thirty and in bed by ten.” I stopped walking and put my foot up on a convenient bench, ostensibly to retie my shoelace. Emma wasn’t fooled.

  “Get moving, old woman,” she said, steaming forward mercilessly, “or no bagel with your coffee today.” I groaned and trotted to catch up with her. “Besides, who’s to say you can’t make those differences work in your favor?”

  I remained silent but raised an eyebrow questioningly.

  “Think about it. You’ll each have your own bedroom and bathroom, so you won’t need to tiptoe around each other. When you get up at the crack of dawn, he’ll still be tucked up. You can have your coffee and crossword puzzle in the silence you love, then hit the shower. When you’re ready to leave the house, he’ll just be getting up and can blast the Today show. At night, it’s the reverse. You get to come home to an empty house and wind down in peace. He gets home from work at 8:00 p.m., warms up the extra plate of supper you’ve left in the microwave, you chat a little, and you’re off to bed with a book while he does TV.”

  I considered Emma’s scenario as we passed a row of business establishments on the opposite side of the street. The line-up included Antiques on Main, which sold a fascinating collection of antiques and furniture oddments; Blades Salon, where all the really good local gossip was exchanged while hair and skin and fingers and toes were whipped into shape; Mainly Tea, which served up luncheons and high teas to eager locals and tourists alike five days a week; and Heart of the Country, another lovely gift shop, Apparently, the salon and the antiques shop had collaborated on their scarecrow exhibit, which featured two ladies of advanced years seated under old-fashioned dryers. Their hair was in rollers, and they sipped tea from lovely old cups. A third scarecrow presided over the bone chine teapot and antique cash register set atop a hay bale.

  “What about weekends?” I demanded as we passed the Village Diner on the corner, unwilling to be so easily swayed. We would stop in on our way back to get coffee to bring to the office. Early morning patrons already sat at the counter and tables, hoping to be waited on soon by surly Prudence Crane, widely acknowledged to be the worst waitress in town. None of us could understand why Abigail Stoddard, the diner’s owner, put up with her.

  “Oh, get a grip! You’re together all weekend now. What will be any different?”

  She had a point. I trudged on mutely. Then, “How about the packrat versus neat freak thing?” Ha! I had her there, I thought, but Emma remained serene.

  “He can get only so much stuff into his room, and if you can’t stand the sight of it, do what you did with Joey and me when we were teenagers. Just close the door. Besides,” she added, playing her ace, “there’s Grace.”

  I had almost forgotten about Grace. By this time, we were on the outskirts of the Old Main Street business district and began to descend a small slope into the parking area for Wethersfield Cove. Despite the early hour, a few cars were parked facing the water, a seemly distance apart. Their occupants gazed out at the cove, sipped coffee, or paged through the morning newspaper, according to preference. Henry Ellis, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Old Wethersfield Gazette, our weekly newspaper, stood outside his car pointing his digital camera at the birds warming themselves in the early morning sun. Clara Seymour’s old Dodge was tucked into its usual spot under a low-hanging tree limb down by the water’s edge. Clara was the high school principal’s wife. It was an open secret that she sneaked down to the cove mornings to enjoy a cigarette with her coffee, a practice of which her husband did not approve. I lifted a hand to Ephraim Marsh, the owner of Marsh Pharmacy, which had occupied the space across the street from the diner for at least three generations now; but in accordance with local etiquette, we refrained from approaching his Ford, thus intruding on what would probably be the most peaceful few moments of his day. On our way down to the water’s edge, Abby Stoddard passed us in her old van en route back to the diner, her brief respite over. The new ordinance would be particularly hard on Abby, whose smoking customers had been accommodated on the brick patio behind her establishment but would soon be deprived of that privilege.

  A few scruffy seagulls argued over the remains of a bran muffin, while the ducks and pigeons feigned indifference. Suddenly, an approaching flock of Canada geese honked us to attention. Emma and I exchanged broad grins and turned to watch the show. At this time of year flocks came and went regularly, flying at night and settling onto any friendly body of water to rest and feed by day. I never tired of watching the landing ritual.

  As the volume of the honking increased, the leader appeared over the tree line to our north. The rest of the flock trailed behind in an ever-widening vee-formation. Hundreds of the sleek birds soon darkened the sky above us, honking excitedly at the sight of a potential resting place. Instead of landing immediately, the leader decided to make a scouting pass. He made one complete circle of the cove, then led his troops back over the tree line. Their sounds ebbed, and we held our breath. Had we passed muster? Did the cove meet their stringent criteria for safe harbor, or had some goosey eye spotted a suspicious glint of metal in the marsh grass that might be a hunter’s rifle or some other peril, real or imaginary?

  We waited five seconds, ten. Then, whooping joyously, a consensus reached, the geese burst back over the trees and swooped down to the water in a graceful half-circle. The leader splashed down in the center of the cove, leaving room for his cohorts to follow suit and create a feathery blanket atop the water. They landed feet-first to slow their forward momentum, so utterly in unison that the maneuver seemed genetically choreographed. Within half a minute they were all at rest, gabbling to each other companionably as they bobbed on the surface. Time for food and rest, and if the weather was good tonight, they would depart on another leg of their journey to more hospitable winter quarters in the Carolinas.

  It was magical. Emma and I smiled happily at each other. We turned back toward the street, setting a more leisurely pace. “Grace will be an enormous help, I know,” I said, picking up our conversation where we had left off, “but she can only clean around the stuff. She can’t prevent it from accumulating.” Grace Sajak was my twice-a-month cleaning person and a godsend to every one of her clients.

  As soon as we pushed through the doors of the diner, the mingled aromas of hot coffee and cinnamon pastry washed over us, and we hurried to the counter to place our order. To our surprise, but not displeasure, Prudy was nowhere to be seen. Instead, we were greeted by Deenie Hewitt, the perpetually worried-looking college student who filled all the take-out orders during the morning shift before rushing off to afternoon classes.

  “Hey, Emma, Miz Lawrence. Having the usual, or is this an off-diet day? We have nice, fresh sticky buns.”

  Emma and I exchanged done-for looks. Abby’s sticky buns were truly awesome. At the same moment we said, “We’ll split one.” As always, Deenie pretended surprise.

  “Coming right up then,” she said and busied herself removi
ng a large, fragrant pastry from the doughnut tower on the counter. Deftly, she cut it in half, wrapped it up, and deposited it atop two coffees in a paper bag.

  “Where’s your sidekick?” Emma asked Deenie while I dug in my pocket for exact change.

  Deenie shrugged, her attention already shifting to the customer in line behind us. “No clue,” she said, nodding in the direction of Abby Stoddard, uncharacteristically taking an order at a booth in the rear. Normally, Abby spent her time tending to business in her cluttered office behind the kitchen. “Just didn’t turn up this morning. Didn’t even have the decency to call and make excuses. Miz Stoddard’s fit to be tied. You have a nice day now.”

  We got out of her way and pushed back through the diner doors to the street. By unspoken mutual consent we immediately rummaged in the bag for the still-warm sticky bun. We each bit deeply and groaned in ecstasy, rolling our eyes at each other as we strolled back toward the Law Barn. Three big bites, and we were licking icing off our fingers as we approached the Blades Salon. We paused at the three lady scarecrows, circling around front to admire the exhibit more closely.

  “This is amazing,” I said, lapping shamelessly at a final drip between my thumb and forefinger. “I know they’re scarecrows, but the wigs are such a great touch. Putting them in curlers and getting them to sit right on those straw noggins underneath the dryers must have taken forever.” I frowned as I noticed that some disgruntled smoker, no doubt protesting the new ban, had stubbed out a filter tip in one of the saucers. “And look at the hands on the one on the left! The skin is so realistic looking against her blue dress …” I trailed off uncertainly, my stomach tightening.

  I looked at Emma, who had remained motionless during my commentary, clutching the bagged coffees to her chest. She was frozen, staring at the scarecrows while the color drained from her face. “Momma?”

  Not a good sign, I thought. She only calls me Momma when she’s sick. Or scared. The little hairs on the back of my neck prickled atavistically as I approached the exhibit on stiff, unwilling legs. From across the street, the three characters in the little tableau had looked like elderly sisters, but up close, the differences jumped out. Which of these things is not like the others? I thought idiotically, remembering the old “Sesame Street” jingle. The lady seated on the left was the obvious answer. Although dressed in similar clothing and sporting tufts of straw at her cuffs and hemline, the hands balancing her teacup in her lap were distinctly human, unlike the knotted straw ones of her companions. The skin, though bluish in tint, looked absolutely real as did the nails, which were both dirty and broken. While it was as gray as the others, her hair was clumped hastily around a few mismatched rollers in contrast to her neatly-set seatmate. Perhaps most alarmingly, her head drooped forward to rest against the front of the dryer, hiding most of her face.

  Very deliberately, Emma placed her bag on the sidewalk and came to stand next to me. I didn’t want to, but I put a bracing hand against the woman’s right shoulder as Emma tipped the dryer hood up and back. The full weight of the upper body sagged against me, and Emma pushed on the left shoulder to help me sit blue-dress lady upright. Wearing her habitual dour expression and a slash of duct tape over her mouth, Prudence Crane sat before us, no longer among the missing, and very dead.

  “Guess we’d better let Abby know that Prudy won’t be coming in today,” Emma commented matter-of-factly. She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and looked at it blankly. Then she sat down hard on the curb.

  Two

  After taking a few deep breaths apiece, Emma and I realized that our gruesome discovery had gone unnoticed by the few pedestrians on the street. A block away on the other side of the street, a cluster of small boys labored on their entry in the scarecrow competition, which, judging from the outdated uniform, spectacles and odd hat, seemed to a scout leader circa 1950. Other than Miriam Drinkwater, who was letting herself into the Keeney Memorial a block farther down for her morning shift as volunteer tour guide, the only citizens to be seen at this hour were scurrying from their parked cars into the diner and back. Rather than risk pandemonium by going back inside and calling for help, we used Emma’s cell phone to place a 911 call to the Wethersfield Police Department. Even though we made it clear that poor Prudy was beyond medical help, we braced ourselves for the inevitable rush of emergency vehicles that would arrive in conjunction with the official investigation that had been set into motion with our call.

  I also knew that the dozens of private citizens who monitored police calls via scanners in their homes would ensure a crowd of gawkers on the scene very soon, so time was of the essence if the crime scene were to be preserved. And finally, the next person who came out of the diner would be certain to get the bare facts, then hustle back inside, bristling with self-importance, to take center stage as The First Person to Know About the Murder. The only question was, who would it be?

  The answer wasn’t long in coming. No sooner did our ears pick up the wail of approaching sirens than Mavis Griswold, the Methodist minister’s wife, appeared from the direction of the diner. She came up behind us where we sat on the curb and paused as it became evident that the emergency vehicles were converging at the place where we stood.

  “Are you all right?” she hastened to inquire, as befitted a clergyman’s missus. “Is anyone hurt?”

  Her long-lashed, wide-set brown eyes and pleasant expression always reminded me, most irreverently, of Elsie the Cow. Under the present somber circumstances I admonished myself to get a grip and assured her that Emma and I were just fine. Then as gently as possible, I pointed out that Prudy Crane seemed to have gone to meet her maker, cause or causes unknown. That’s when Mavis surprised me. Instead of having an attack of the vapors, she turned slowly to confront Prudy where she sat, silver duct tape covering her mouth. And then Mavis smiled.

  At the time I didn’t have an opportunity to ponder her odd reaction. A police cruiser screeched down Old Main Street from our left, followed closely by the emergency rescue van and two unmarked sedans with blue emergency lights on their dashboards. Next to arrive was the volunteer ambulance, driven at breakneck speed by Tom Clancy. Tom taught high school mathematics and lived for these occasions, which tended to elevate his standing among his students. Customers poured out of the diner to see what all the commotion was about, and arriving employees of the business establishments that lined the street soon joined the growing throng.

  I was pleased to see Rick Fletcher, a young cop who had graduated from high school with Joey and one year ahead of Emma, emerge from the cruiser with his partner, who quickly began the job of backing off the crowd. Lieutenant John Harkness, the extraordinarily good-looking but perpetually dour commander of the detective division, stepped out of one of the unmarked cars. “Lieutenant Hardnose,” as he was known among the locals, quickly took charge of the crime scene. Rick grabbed a reel of yellow crime scene tape and began securing the area from civilian interference.

  Harkness supervised the preliminary investigation. He consulted briefly with the State police team that had apparently been summoned to handle the forensics, then spoke with the investigator from the medical examiner’s office, whose job it was to deal with Prudy’s, ugh, body.

  Once the bystanders were corralled at a safe distance, Rick’s partner produced a digital camera from their cruiser and carefully photographed the assembled crowd, while Rick himself walked over to where Emma and I still sat.

  “Hey, Miz Lawrence, Emma,” he said politely. After checking out our ashen faces, he wisely refrained from asking us to stand up, opting instead to plunk down companionably next to Emma. “So how’s your day going so far?” he asked her, straight faced, and got the desired effect. Emma broke up, which got me giggling, and the tension was broken. A few shocked onlookers were apparently persuaded by the others that we must be having hysterics, and who could blame us, poor things, having found the body and all?

  It didn’t take long for Rick to get the facts from us, as there wasn’t
much to tell. His partner had replaced the still camera with a video cam and expertly panned the crime scene and the faces in the crowd. After listening to our story attentively, Rick nodded briefly and rose to his feet. “We’re going to have to take you down to the station to formalize your statements,” he said, offering me a discreet hand as I struggled to rise. Emma had already unfolded herself and dusted off the seat of her jeans. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour, but it needs to be done as fast as possible.” Nodding pleasantly at the gawkers on the sidewalk, Rick lifted the yellow crime scene tape for us to duck under, then shepherded us through the crowd to where a plainclothes detective waited by one of the unmarked vehicles. “Here’s your ride,” he smiled and introduced us to Detective Harold Bernstein.

  Looking around self-consciously, we clambered into the rear seat of the sedan and were whisked the mile or so to the Wethersfield PD’s new headquarters on the Silas Deane Highway. I was relieved to note that the blue emergency light was not in use.

  On the second floor of the pleasant brick building, we were escorted to an interview room, where Emma was ushered in first. Police procedure dictated that we give our statements separately.

  “I thought it was supposed to be age before beauty,” Emma sassed me, her poise now restored. She walked into the room and looked around with interest. “What, no stenographer?”

  “Sorry,” said Detective Bernstein. “Literate witnesses are asked to write out their statements in longhand. You could dictate to me while I enter your statement into my laptop,” he grinned apologetically, “but frankly, you’re better off with the pencil and paper. Our clerical assistant will type it up before you sign it.”