Hearts Grove Cozy Mystery Boxed Set, page 23
part #1 of Hearts Grove Cozy Mystery Series
“I…oh.” Henrietta wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“Doesn’t like them. Too chewy, she says. Anyway, I’m so glad I caught up with you. I’ve been meaning to stop by the shop, but I’ve been too busy. Too busy, I tell you.”
“I’m sure,” Henrietta mused.
“How are preparations for the dance coming?” he asked, clasping his hands in front of him as he awaited her reply.
“They are going very well. Olivia has been a big help, and we’re about ready to move in the larger pieces so it can be arranged.”
“Will everything be ready in time?” he asked, looking genuinely concerned.
“Of course.” She offered a light laugh. “We certainly won’t rest until it’s ready.
“I just—” He looked left and right, then left again, before lowering his voice to a whisper. “Things are…tight. You know, financially. This simply must be the best dance Hearts Grove has ever seen. You understand? The. Best. There’s no way around it.”
“Yes, well, we’re certainly doing what we can to make sure that it is the best one we’ve had. Ever,” she added, to satisfy his insistence.
“Good, good, good.” He glanced at Ralph before looking back at her. “I’d heard rumors you were working with Ralph here on a case, but that’s clearly impossible, seeing as how you have a full plate.” His nervous laughter betrayed him.
“I am working with Ralph,” she began, but rushed on at the look of shock on Rickey’s mouse-ish features. “But I have plenty of time for both things.”
“And your shop?”
“It’s the slow season.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Truly, Rickey, the decorations are almost done—though not in place yet, they are ready to go—and we promise everything will be ready. It will be spectacular.”
“I’m just not—”
“Thanks so much for saying hello,” Ralph said, patting the mayor’s arm rather forcefully as he latched onto Henrietta's other arm. “But we’ve got to go. Business, you know?”
Just then, Henrietta’s phone rang as well. She didn’t recognize the number but used the additional excuse. “I promise we’ll have everything ready and extra-magical,” she said, waving her ringing phone in excuse as they stepped out the door, leaving Rickey nervously wringing his hands.
Ralph was about to comment on the exchange when Henrietta answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Is this Henrietta Hewitt?”
“This is she.” She didn’t recognize the voice on the other end of the line, but the wind had picked up, making it difficult to hear who was on the other line.
“Oh, good. This is Amelia Folsom.”
“Hello, Amelia,” she said pointedly so that Ralph would know who she was on the phone with.
“I’m sorry to call kind of late, but I got your number from Gina. Hope you don’t mind.”
“No, that’s fine. What did you need?”
“I found something at the lighthouse as I was cleaning today. I think you should come see it. Ralph told me you’d be working on the personal aspects of the case and…well, I think this fits in with that.”
Henrietta’s eyebrows rose, and she nodded to herself as she answered. “Yes, I am. I could come by tomorrow, if that would work?”
“Yes, I can meet you there at ten.”
“Perfect. I’ll see you then.”
“Thank you and good night.”
“Night,” Henrietta said as she hung up.
“Was that Amelia Folsom?”
“It was. It sounds like she’s found something of interest at the lighthouse.”
“Perfect,” he said, grinning. “Want me to come with you?”
Henrietta weighed his words but slowly shook her head. “I think I should go by myself, at least at first. I think it would be good for me to get to know Amelia a little bit and see if she can offer any more information.”
“Sounds good to me. I trust your intuition.”
“Perfect. Does that mean you’ll take me to Bert’s?”
He rolled his eyes at her mention of their favorite ice cream place. “If your intuition insists, then I cannot deny it.”
She grinned, and he extended his arm for her. To Bert’s it was.
5
The Starlight Lighthouse sat atop a rocky hill overlooking the choppy February waters. A thin mist hung at its base despite the late-morning hour, and Henrietta wished she’d brought a camera to capture the sight. It looked as if the lighthouse was rising from a magical fog.
She’d come a few minutes early and took her time walking up to the lighthouse, taking stock of the area. She knew from the papers that Gerald’s body had been found in the lighthouse, but not much more than that. With the new detective in town, it was likely they wouldn’t know exactly how things had been found, but she planned to ask Amelia to share what she knew, if anything.
It was risky, not to mention possibly insensitive, asking such a thing, but Henrietta came back to the fact that the young woman had asked them for help. In order to do that, they needed all of the facts and as much information as they could gather.
As Henrietta circled around the base of the lighthouse, she saw the door through which she assumed she’d find the lighthouse keeper’s quarters and the residence of Gerald Folsom. The other main area, the part that was often opened to the public in the warmer months, was around the opposite side.
From her vantage point, she could see a small window beside the door but nothing else. To her knowledge there wasn’t another entrance to the keeper's quarters, only the one front door. That limited access quite a bit and meant that, if Gerald hadn’t killed himself—a fact she believed in more and more—then someone had come in to do the deed.
She came up toward the door slowly, observing the path. She didn’t hope to find anything particular there. Nothing that would point out who had come in, not this long from the time of the incident, but she did want to observe. It was what she did best, and she put her full powers of observation to the test.
The walkway was covered to the right side with shrubs that reached over six feet high. The other side started exposed and easily seen from the road; then as it dipped down with a stone wall rising up, a person would soon be obscured from the roadway. It made the entrance to the lighthouse keeper's quarters very secluded.
At the door, Henrietta began to inspect the lock closely. From her outside vantage point, it didn’t look as if anyone had tampered with the mechanism. Then she moved to the window and noted that, while it was functional and likely opened by unlatching from the inside, there would be no way to enter through it without breaking it in.
“Henrietta?” Amelia said as she came around the outside of the lighthouse.
“Hello,” Henrietta said, turning away from her window inspection. “I was just…looking.”
“Of course. Here, let me get you inside.”
The young woman unlocked the door, and it creaked as it swung inward. The space was sparse, decorated with only what looked like the necessities aside from an overstuffed bookshelf on the backwall.
“I haven’t had the heart to pack this up yet,” Amelia said. “I cleaned out his storage closet on the other side and took a few things out, like food and such, but,” she looked around the room, “this was my father’s life for so many years. It’s hard to think of destroying it.”
“I can imagine,” she said, crossing to the small potbelly stove. The shelf behind it boasted a few small frames, and she looked at each one without touching. One frame held a photo of Amelia with Gerald. It looked to be a few years old, judging by the length of Amelia’s hair now, but the smiles on both of their faces spoke volumes.
Next was an old black-and-white image of the Starlight Lighthouse. It looked to be vintage and from the era of the lighthouse’s glory days. Then, the last photo was of a grassy field with a blurry image in the distance. It looked like the form of a woman but was so blurry, with the flowers in the foreground being the focus, that you couldn’t make out any details of the person. It was a lovely photo, though.
Henrietta moved from the fireplace to the wall of books and then the comfy chair, a small but messy desk, and then an old, weathered trunk under the window. Nothing else stuck out to her, but she finally turned to face Amelia.
“What is it that you found?” she asked, noting that Amelia had been quiet, as if she too had been lost in contemplation about the small space.
“Well, it’s honestly a little odd for me to have found these.” She went to the trunk, tugged up the lid, and pulled out an old photo box with worn edges.
Henrietta wondered if the woman had found images, but when she opened the lid, she saw that the box was filled with papers.
“Letters,” Amelia clarified, as if reading Henrietta’s thoughts. “To my father. From a woman.”
“A…woman?”
“My mother died when I was five. I don’t even really remember her, at least not well, but I know that my father never dated—at least that I knew of when I was younger—and as I got older, I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell. But I think I would have known if he were dating someone, you know?”
“What is the content of these letters, then?”
“I haven’t been able to go through them all. In fact, I only read a few of them and it was…too hard at this point. I wanted to give them to you to look over, though. They could be a clue.”
Henrietta accepted the box and rifled through the letters. She picked one out and opened it. “Do you know anyone named…” She looked over the letter to the end. “Dee?”
“No. Not at all. I mean, some of the letters certainly made it sound as if they were…involved. But like I said, I never saw my father go on a date or anything like that.”
Henrietta tucked this information in the back of her mind, nodding slowly. “I’ll look into these and see if I can’t figure out if they are relevant to the investigation.”
“Thank you. If I find anything else, I’ll let you know.”
Henrietta nodded then looked at her phone for the time. “Would you mind if I stayed a little longer? I asked Ralph to meet me here to look around, if you don’t mind, of course.”
“That’s completely fine. I’m actually heading off to work, but you can stay as long as you like. Just lock up when you’re done.”
“Will do.”
Amelia smiled her thanks and left, leaving the door unlocked as she went.
Henrietta circled the small, moon-shaped room again. Everything was tidy, even in some of its clutter. It looked like a place that belonged to someone who knew exactly where everything was, even if it didn’t look that way.
She walked closer to the bookshelves and began looking through them, but her mind continued to be pulled back to the letters. She was certain her best efforts would be to go through them methodically, taking notes and making mental images of them all, but in this space—the connection to Gerald felt even more real, and she wanted to look at them right then.
She sat in a large leather armchair and put the box on her lap. She shuffled through the letters and realized they went from oldest at the bottom, to newest at the top. Had he added the letters as they arrived?
No envelopes accompanied the letters, so it was impossible to tell where they had been sent from or even the date. But inside she found that the sender had dated each letter, just as she had signed them all the same:
Always love, Dee.
The first letter had just caught her attention when the front door swung in. She jerked up and took in a gasping breath when she saw Ralph standing in the doorway, shrouded by a hooded parka.
“You could have called out,” she said, a hand to her pounding heart.
“Hello,” he said in mock loudness.
She shot him a less-than-amused look and went back to the letter for a moment before looking back up at Ralph. “I think Gerald had a lover.”
“Um, really?”
“Yes, but I’ll have to read the rest of these,” she held up the box, “before I know exactly how that relationship worked.”
“Do you have a few more minutes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Let’s go walk through a murder.”
Thankfully, the door to the other side of the lighthouse was open and they went inside. When Amelia had said they needed to lock up, Henrietta hadn’t known she meant to lock up the whole lighthouse, but she was glad to know they had the access they needed.
“It’s not going to be pretty,” Ralph said to Henrietta.
“I expected not.” When they stepped into the space, she immediately saw the area where the crime must have happened. It was cleaned, but the stains remained. Poor Amelia, Henrietta thought. She’d had to work with this in sight the whole time. She was a strong woman.
Ralph walked over to the site, nodding his head. “Yep, this is what I expected.”
“Wait a minute,” Henrietta said, her eyes narrowing as she took in her friend’s calculated expression. “How do you know what happened?”
Ralph reached into his jacket and pulled out a manila envelope as his grin widened. “Oh, just this.”
“And what is that?” She paced toward him.
“The case file for Gerald Folsom.”
“Ralph,” she scolded, “you’re not supposed to have that.”
“Eh, well it is a closed case.”
“I’m sure you’re still not supposed to have it.”
“I live by the motto ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Still, aren’t you curious?”
She hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”
Ralph opened the file and began to walk through everything that they’d written down. “It looks like he was kneeling here.” He indicated the point on the ground and knelt as the report indicated. “And he apparently pulled the trigger in this way.” He demonstrated that as well, and Henrietta shuddered. It was not pleasant thinking about this, and she wished she could focus more on the who than the how—but one came from the other, so she recognized the importance of seeing it through.
When Ralph pulled out his gun to give a real-life example to what had happened, she forced him to stop.
“No, please put it away.”
“But Henri, I—”
“Please, Ralph, it’s just…” She trailed off, and her head tilted to the side in thought.
“I mean I understand, but—”
“Ralph.” The insistence in her tone made him look up at her from where he was strapping his sidearm into his shoulder holster.
“What?”
“Take it out again.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, almost rolling his eyes. “First you tell me to put it away, and now you want it out again? Which is it?”
She came forward. “It’s unloaded, right?”
“No, but the safety is on.”
“Hum.” Frowning, she shook her head. “Okay, leave it there but hold your hand up as if you were about to pull the trigger.”
He narrowed his eyes but did as she asked. As she watched him, a lightbulb came on.
“He didn’t kill himself, and I’m certain we can prove it.”
Ralph’s eyes widened. “And just how are you going to do that?”
“Dr. Mays.” She had a feeling her eyes were practically sparkling at this revelation, but Ralph waited respectfully for her to explain. “When I met with him yesterday, he said that Gerald was in excellent health.”
“Right, you mentioned that.”
“What I forgot to tell you is the fact that he was in excellent health except for one finger.”
“Come again?”
“His right pointer finger, to be exact.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“I forget what it’s called, but Dr. Mays said that he was referring Gerald to someone to get it taken care of.”
“So, what you’re saying is that Gerald was incapable of pulling the trigger.”
“We’d have to ask Dr. Mays specifically, but I think that’s exactly it. He couldn’t have killed himself with a gun like they said he did.”
“Golly,” Ralph said, pushing to his feet. “That is some good sleuthing, Henrietta.
“Thank you.”
“But I don’t know if it’s enough.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Sure, we can have the Doc testify that he couldn’t have done it, but I still think there’s an argument to what someone can do when they are hyped up on adrenaline. You’d be surprised.”
“You think he got so worked up he was able to pull the trigger, despite his physical incapability? Seems a little far-flung, doesn’t it?”
“Of course it does,” he agreed, “but I’m thinking of that young detective and what he might argue. We need more. Those letters may be a good start. What do you think? Jilted lover? Got back at him for something?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to read through them to really know, but it doesn’t seem like he would keep the letters if that were the case,” she said.
“Maybe he hadn’t gotten around to tossing them.”
“Well,” she held up a finger and placed the box on the windowsill, looking for the newest letter. She assumed it was the one on top and pulled it out. Sure enough, it was dated just a week before Gerald’s death and was still signed the same as the others.
She told Ralph as much, but he shook his head. “Nah, things can change in an instant. Maybe she came to see him and something happened.”
“Still, to make it seem like suicide by…gun,” she swallowed, “doesn’t sound like something a former lover would do.”
“You can’t be too sure on something like murder, Henrietta. I know it sounds cold, but people do surprising and awful things sometimes.”
Henrietta sighed, knowing it was true. Still, perhaps it was the hint of the romantic in her heart, or just a hope she had, but she didn’t think that the author of the love letters was responsible for Gerald’s death.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ralph said, ushering her forward with a gentle hand on her back.
