Murder on the Bluffs, page 7
Something about the woman looked familiar to me. I resumed my walk, slowly now, keeping an eye on the boat. Its motor slowed further. The woman pulled it up right near the shoreline and cut the engine. She threw what looked like a small plow head on the end of a thick rope into the water. The woman shrugged on a knapsack and climbed off the front of the boat. She hopped into the shallow water wearing tall black rubber boots. Right in front of me.
“Hello there,” the woman greeted me.
I returned the salutation. The woman didn’t seem surprised to see me. Looking around, I saw how many other people strolled the beach. Why should she be surprised?
But I was the surprised one. This was Mary Heard. From Iris’s bakery the morning that seemed like a month ago now but was only a few days prior.
“Mrs. Heard, right? I saw you . . .”
Mary held up her hand. “That’s Ms. Heard. I am not married at present.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I must have looked confused, because Mary went on.
“Charles is my brother.” Her face, which a moment before had been politely animated, now darkened. “Or was, I suppose I now must say.”
Her brother. And why not? “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I murmured, but I felt foolish uttering the trite phrase.
Wulu ran up and emitted a happy bark at Mary. Her face lightened again.
“Who’s this sweet pea?” She bent to scratch him behind the ears.
Wulu wriggled in happy acceptance. He could tell a dog person a mile off. And Mary had gone up a notch in my esteem, as well.
“His name is Wulu. It means ‘dog’ in Bambara.”
Mary uttered doggie endearments for another moment before straightening. “Where do they speak Bambara?”
“In Mali. It’s in West Africa.”
Mary nodded as if that was public knowledge. In my experience, it wasn’t. Lots of Americans knew next to nothing about Africa.
“And Wulu’s person is?” Mary asked.
“Oh, sorry. I’m Lauren Rousseau.”
Mary’s face sobered again. She fixed my eyes with her own. “You found Charles.”
“Yes, I did. I . . .” I stopped. Deep breath. “Yes. Is there anything I can share with you about that? I mean, I don’t want to add hurt. But, well, I know sometimes people want to know the details.” I was thinking not of Charles Heard, though, but of hearing the news about my father’s death. Wanting always to know more.
Mary shut her eyes. Her lips pressed tight as if to prevent them from trembling in front of a stranger. She seemed to master her emotions and opened her eyes. “I came across the channel because I want to go up there. To see where he was found. I brought my camera. I need to see it.” Her perfectly arched eyebrows drew down at the outer edges.
“I’ll take you. We can go up together.” I worried for an instant about entering those woods with a person I knew nothing about. Mary seemed like a bereaved sister. She was well groomed, sounded educated. So bad people were never educated or well groomed? I shook off my doubts. I laid my hand on Mary’s arm for a moment. When she flinched, I quickly withdrew my hand.
She cleared her throat, then nodded at me. “Let’s go.”
We walked up the beach to the beginning of the wide path. I pointed down toward the rocky area. “I went up from there when I found him. But we should go by the path.”
She stopped. “Why did you go up that way? How did you even see him?”
These were the kinds of details Mary needed. The kinds I had never learned about Daddy’s death. I drew a deep breath.
“I saw a splash of white. I thought it was an early flower. I wanted to identify it. Actually, I wanted to be able to describe it so my sister could identify it.”
“I see.”
“So I climbed up the bank through the brush. When I moved closer, it wasn’t a flower. It was his shirt. His white shirt.” I felt that chill again of realizing I’d seen a person, not a native plant. And not a live person.
“Thank you.” Mary didn’t meet my eyes. “Let’s keep going.” She followed me on the path as it narrowed.
I searched the left side until I spied the smaller pathway through the trees. “This way,” I motioned, holding a branch for my taller companion. Wulu followed along. We walked in silence for several minutes.
“I saw a nice bonsai spruce in the insurance office last week.” Maybe chatting about a neutral topic would put Mary at ease. “Young Mark said it was yours.”
Mary nodded. “It is.”
“I take care of one, too. Mine’s an elm.”
Mary raised her eyebrows.
At her nonresponse, I let the topic go, thinking I likely wouldn’t want to make small talk, either, if my brother had recently been murdered. If I had a brother.
Soon we arrived at the trampled path barred by a wide yellow police tape strung between two trees. I pointed. “It’s right through there.”
“They can’t still be searching here,” Mary said. “Let’s go around the tree.”
In a minute we stood side by side at the edge of the clearing. The sounds of the ocean lapping, dogs barking, and people chatting as they strolled the beach below seemed only feet away.
“I found him there, Mary.” I pointed again, then realized Mary was no longer next to me. The silence of a sudden pause in the noises below roared in my ears. I couldn’t see or hear Wulu, either. Spooked, I turned slowly.
Mary stood back by the yellow tape. Her right hand was in her pack. A weird expression coated her face like a mask. My heart thumped. It beat faster. What was Mary doing? Where was Wulu?
Mary pulled a professional-looking camera out of her bag, and her face returned to its usual genteel look. Wulu ran up with wet leaves stuck to his head. The ambient sounds resumed. I took a deep breath and told myself to get a grip.
“I want to record this. For myself,” Mary said. She removed a lens cap and began to take pictures. “By the way, you didn’t kill Charles, did you?” Her eyes remained on the viewfinder. The camera clicked repeatedly.
I stared at her.
Mary stopped shooting and looked over the camera. “Well, the chief seems to think you might have. And he doesn’t have diddly-squat for other ideas.”
“No, I did not kill your brother. I barely knew him. I bought my insurance from him. Why would I kill him?”
“I didn’t think you did.” Mary resumed her photography. “It’d be pretty stupid of me to come into the woods with a killer, don’t you think?”
I agreed as I backed out of the scene, amused and a little disturbed that each of them had had the same thought. “Who do you think would have wanted him dead, though? Did he have enemies? People who disliked him that much?”
Mary lowered the camera again. “You’re not from here, are you? Charles had trouble getting along with almost everybody. Got in fights in high school. Couldn’t stay married. Sure, he was a successful businessman, and a Trustee. But my little brother was not well liked. He and I had our own share of disagreements.”
“For someone to go so far as to murder him—that’s way beyond not getting along.” I leaned against a tree and folded my arms.
Mary shrugged and started snapping pictures again. “I’m leaving that to the experts.”
Wulu bumped my leg. I reached down and ruffled his head. “Where did you go, little guy?”
Wulu yipped and ran back into the woods, then back to me. He looked up at me.
“What? Do you have something for me?” I followed him a little ways into the underbrush, where he stood expectantly over a mound of leaves and sticks. Light from a gap in the tree canopy shone on small green shoots of something popping up nearby. And on something shiny that gleamed in Wulu’s pile of leaves.
I knelt. I picked up a stick and poked around the shiny thing, uncovering it. It looked like a cigarette lighter. An old-fashioned one, not the throwaway colored plastic ones I saw on sale at the convenience store. I extracted a tissue from my pocket and fished down to pick up the object. I knew enough from cop shows not to touch it with my fingers. This could be a clue to Charles’s killer. I slipped it in my pocket. I’d call the chief as soon as I arrived home. Wulu gave me his What-a-Good-Dog-I-Am look. I patted him and whispered my thanks.
I straightened and looked back to the clearing, deciding I wouldn’t tell Mary about the find. Not now, anyway.
“I’m almost done here,” Mary said. She’d crossed over and stood a down the slope I had originally climbed up to find the body. “What’d the dog find?”
“Dead baby squirrel,” I lied. “Nice, what dogs get into.”
• • •
I typed “The Bluffs Ashford” into Facebook’s search bar an hour later. I took a bite of the peanut-butter-and-lettuce sandwich that was my dinner tonight, chasing it down with a sip of seltzer. I gazed at the results. So the Bluffs had its own community page. I clicked the link.
It looked like an announcement board for social events. Tide Pool Camp sign-ups were due by June 1. The Spring Cleanup at Half Moon Beach was successful, and all volunteers were gratefully thanked. And so on. I clicked the info tab and scrolled down.
A section on the Trustees. Just what I sought. I knew Charles Heard had been a Trustee, but I didn’t know who the other lifetime members were. It looked like quite the cozy club, if you thought middle-aged white men were cozy. A picture featured four males standing on a dock. To a one they adhered to a uniform of pastel-colored polo shirt, khaki Bermuda shorts, and dock shoes without socks. One was taller and younger than the rest. Besides Charles, there was Walter Colby, the slick banker I had met earlier in the week, another older man I’d never seen before, and . . . I peered at the picture. Dan Talbot. The sexy carpenter-sensei. A Trustee? Really? How did he earn that position? I’d heard it was virtually a dynasty, that the Trustee positions were handed down from father to son. His father must have been a Trustee, then.
I clicked the link on his name. His personal page opened. I clicked the photos area, curious if he had a wife or girlfriend in his life. I gazed at a beaming sensei standing behind a little gi-clad boy who grasped a trophy. Dan hammering at the growing skeleton of a house behind a Habitat for Humanity sign. Dan and a tall older man sailing a small boat in front of what looked like Holt Beach.
I closed my eyes and tried to picture Dan’s left hand. Ring? No ring? I didn’t remember seeing one, but I also knew men who worked with their hands who said it was dangerous to wear any jewelry. They said that a protrusion or a tool could hook on to a ring and cause serious hand damage.
I clicked back to his home page and didn’t have to think long before clicking Add as Friend.
As I stood up to refill my glass, I felt a shape in my pocket. Oh. The cigarette lighter from the woods at Holt. I hadn’t called the police. By the time Wulu and I had returned home, the sun had set and I’d forgotten all about it. I checked the time in the corner of the computer. Wow, time flew when you wandered through the Internet. It was already nine o’clock. No way Chief Flaherty would be on duty on a Saturday night. Someone would be at the station, though.
But would they know what to do with the lighter? How could I explain traipsing around behind crime-scene tape with Mary Heard?
I thought the wiser choice would be to wait until I could talk face-to-face with the chief and hand the lighter over to him directly. Less room for error that way. I extracted a fresh ziplock bag from the kitchen and carefully slipped the lighter from the tissue into the bag. I switched on a lamp and held the bag in the pool of light. It appeared to be an antique silver lighter, like the one my grandmother always clicked to light her cigarettes in a matching silver cigarette holder. I looked closely. One side held engraved initials in a curly script, but I couldn’t make them out.
I switched from seltzer to red wine and returned to my office. In a spare spot on the bookshelf, a relaxed Zac beamed out from a wavy glass frame. He squatted with his hand on Wulu. The Toil-in-Vain Creek sparkled behind them. I’d snapped that picture soon after Zac and I had met the fall before. That had been a sunnier time for us.
I thought if I visited a shrink, he would probably tell me I had abandonment issues. My father had disappeared when I was nineteen. When I was just starting to learn what loving a man meant. Since then, whenever a relationship grew too close, I grew itchy and claustrophobic. Which didn’t bode well if I ever reached the point where what I wanted was a life of intimacy and family.
I sighed. Letting a sip of the dark liquid comfort me, I sat back down. I could think about Zac later. On the monitor was a message box. Dan Talbot had approved my Friend request. Was he sitting at home alone, too?
• • •
Wulu pulled me toward the condo after our walk in the park at the top of the hill the next morning. It was going to be a busy day, so we’d gotten our walk in early. I’d be off to Friends Meeting soon, then lunch with my mother. And Charles Heard’s funeral was this afternoon. I thought it would be respectful to show up, even though I’d barely known the man. Finding his body had forged a macabre link between us.
The ancient stucco mansion on the left was the first house on the narrow road after the park. I had often wondered what the story was behind the large house, which faced away from the road with a view over the marshes beyond. It had to have been a splendid summer estate a century earlier. Now it was in need of repair. Water stains marred the walls, and paint peeled off the woodwork. A nearly equally ancient Mercedes was parked in the circular drive. A beat-up red truck sat behind it. Was it the truck that had almost run me down, which had come from this direction? I thought the house was occupied, because of the cars and lights I sometimes saw through the windows, but I had never met the inhabitants or even seen them outside.
As we passed the house, a man emerged from the back and slammed the screen door behind him. He glanced at us but didn’t seem to recognize me.
I raised my hand in greeting. The man was Bobby Spirokis. So that was who lived there. He stumped over to the red truck, climbed in, and spun gravel as he drove away. I lowered my hand. Maybe he hadn’t seen me. That truck was definitely the one that had driven straight at me. Surely it hadn’t been on purpose, but Bobby needed to work on his driving safety.
• • •
I locked my bicycle outside the Millsbury Friends Meetinghouse an hour later. When I’d left my condo to ride to Friends Meeting two towns away, the sky was clear over Ashford. The morning sun seemed to shine into all the dark corners and sweep them out. Half an hour later, clouds had blown in and the temperature dropped, making me wish I’d worn a heavier jacket for the ride home.
I exchanged greetings at the door with Dorothy, an angular elder who, despite her tendency to be something of a grouch, was one of the most politically active people I knew, always writing letters to the editor and standing weekly in silent peace vigils. I took a seat on one of the plain wooden pews arranged in a rectangle. I faced the simple white walls free of any adornment and the nine-foot-high windows that had let light into this room for nearly two hundred years. I closed my eyes.
Images of my father washed over me. This was his birthday. He had been the Quaker in the family and had brought me here with him for many years. My other sisters hadn’t been drawn to it like I had, so it had been a special thing to do together, only Daddy and me, on Sunday mornings. I had taken a break from weekly worship for a few years in high school, when I preferred the company of my peers to any kind of time spent with either of my parents. I had begun to attend again, sitting in the silence next to my father on weekend visits home from college, until he vanished.
After the room filled and quieted, the silence deepened. I struggled to quiet my own thoughts and join the communal prayer. I pictured a circle of light around the benches, around the community gathered there with me. But my mind would not hold still. It raced from image to image: That strange moment when Mary stood with her hand in her knapsack. Discovering that Dan Talbot was a Trustee. Jackie’s angry refusal to discuss our father’s death. My encounter with Dan at the house on Toil-in-Vain Road.
I finally gave up and simply watched the branches outside the windows as they danced in the wind. The new bright green leaves contrasted with the ever-darkening sky. Rain was coming.
During fellowship after Meeting for Worship had ended, Dorothy pulled me aside.
“Today was your father’s birthday, you know.” She looked somber. “I have been holding Harold’s memory in the Light this morning.”
“You knew this was his birthday?”
Dorothy nodded. “We were old friends. I knew him before your mother did.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Right here in Millsbury Meeting. We were children in First Day School together. I was a bit older, of course. I was an only child, so I decided Harold was my little brother. I even asked my mother if I could take him home with us.”
“I didn’t know you’d been friends.”
“Well, we really grew up together. He went off, you know, to college and so on. We were all surprised when he brought Miriam to worship with us the first time. And pleased,” she acknowledged with a frown, as if being pleased went against the grain.
“I thought my mother never came to Meeting.”
“She did at first. I believe her Buddhist studies might have swayed her more in that direction after a time. And then when your sisters weren’t interested, you know, she stayed home with them.”
“I remember that. It’s funny you mention Daddy’s birthday. I have been thinking about him so much recently. I feel like no one will tell me the truth about his disappearance and his death.”
Dorothy gazed at me. She nodded again. “That was a very difficult time for all.” She swayed and reached out to me for support. “I’m sorry, I must sit. I haven’t been feeling as strong as usual lately. Low iron, I daresay.”
I helped the older woman to a chair, then sat across from her. I’d never thought of Dorothy as frail, but the pale arm I’d just held was thin and her skin looked like parchment.
