A Deadly Judgment

Table of Contents

 

 

It was getting dark. I found the street and paused at the comer.

Last chance to change your mind, Jess, I told myself. I pictured Judge Molloy ordering me jailed if she found out I’d talked to a juror. But then I thought of the housewife, Juror Number Seven, being run down by the hit-and-run driver just two days earlier, and of my conversation with her family that revealed she did not believe Billy Brannigan had murdered his older brother. My resolve returned. No backing down now.

 

I looked up the one-way street. A car slowly approached. Plenty of time for me to cross. But as I stepped off the curb, the roar of its engine froze me in my tracks. I turned. It was bearing down on me at racetrack speed....

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First Printing, April 1996
20 19

Copyright
©
1996 Universal Studios Licensing LLLP.
Murder, She Wrote
is

a trademark and copyright of Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

 

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eISBN : 978-1-440-67345-0

For Sandy, Bernadette, and all the wonderful people at The Animal Inn. If their love of and care for four-legged animals were applied to the human species, what a lovely world this would be.

I saw it as a speck on the distant horizon, a tiny insect hovering in the hot haze of the day. It came closer, growing larger, and I could see how the earth’s heated thermals caught it, bounced it about a bit, then allowed it to stabilize before the next updraft took hold.

“Oh, dear,” I said to myself as I watched Jed Richardson maneuver to keep his small single-engine plane on an even keel as it approached Cabot Cove’s airport, such as it is. I’d flown with Jed on a number of occasions, never completely comfortable—there’s something to be said for the large wings and powerful engines of commercial jet aircraft—although I knew Jed was an excellent pilot, his skills honed over twenty years with a major airline until he retired and started Jed’s Flying Service, ferrying Cabot Covers to Bangor and Boston to catch flights elsewhere, taking tourists on airborne sightseeing trips, and operating a flying ambulance service when someone was critically ill and in need of a major hospital center. A consummate professional.

If only his planes were bigger.

Jed had turned into his downwind pattern in preparation for landing the Cessna 182; I knew from him that you always landed a plane into the wind to provide maximum lift under the wings. He banked left until it was time to turn into the wind, which was blowing pretty hard, then slowly descended to the runway, the wings on both sides moving high and low to compensate for shifts of wind as he maintained control until the moment of touchdown, smooth as silk, flaring out and killing power to the engine as the wheels touched with a tiny puff of smoke, came up, then stayed down for good.

I waved as Jed taxied the aircraft to where I stood next to the small one-story white Quonset hut that served as Cabot Cove’s terminal. The window on the passenger side opened and an arm reached out to return my greeting. I was glad to see them on the ground. I would have hated to lose my publisher, Vaughan Buckley, to an airline accident.

Jed killed the engine and the single prop came to a jerky standstill. He jumped out and came around to open the passenger door. Vaughan stepped onto a strut and then down to terra firma. He was as trim as always, looking especially cosmopolitan in his navy sports jacket, pressed tan chinos, argyle socks, and Windexed brown loafers. He and his wife, Olga, always turn heads on the street. She’s a former model—tall, svelte, and sophisticated. And with a heart to rival Mother Teresa.

As he approached, I detected a slight limp. No, on second observation he walked like someone who’d just come off a rough sea voyage and was trying to find his land legs.

“Jessica,” he said, extending his hand.

“My goodness, Vaughan, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Turbulent ride?”

He looked back to where Jed was tying down the Cessna, lowered his voice, and said, “ ‘Turbulent’ is a gross understatement. Glad to be on solid ground again.” His smile was weak. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Jess. We sat on the runway at Logan for quite a spell waiting for a long line of real planes—big planes to take off. But Jed had enough flying stories to help pass the time. Interesting man. Maybe has a book in him.”

“Which I’ve been telling him for years. Anyway, it’s wonderful to see you. Welcome to Cabot Cove.”

This marked the first time Vaughan had visited me on my turf. I’d originally suggested he fly to Bangor and have a limo drive him to Cabot Cave. But, surprisingly, at least to me, he asked whether the small airline I’d mentioned in a scene in one of my books, operated by a crusty Maine native named Jed Richardson, would pick him up in Boston. I was tempted to talk him out of that plan. Somehow, I couldn’t see my erudite publisher enjoying a couple of hours in one of Jed’s puddle jumpers. He’s strictly a first-class traveler, not the roughing-it type. He, Olga, and their two dogs, Sadie and Rose, live in a spacious, exquisite apartment in the Dakota, an elegant building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that overlooks Central Park, the same building where John Lennon and Yoko lived until Lennon was shot to death outside the main gate.

But he’d opted for Jed’s Flying Service, and here he was, safe and sound, if not a little shaky.

Jed drove us into town in his Plymouth Voyager.

“Hungry?” I asked as we entered town.

“Believe it or not, I am, Jess.”

Jed laughed. “Gave your stomach a bit of a tumble,” he said.

“Not at all,” Vaughan said. “It’s made of cast iron. I grabbed a muffin at LaGuardia before I caught the early shuttle. It’s time for dinner according to my internal clock.”

“Then I would say a second breakfast is very much in order,” I said. “Mind dropping us at Mara’s?”

“Not a problem,” Jed said.

“Mara’s is a local institution,” I told Vaughan. “Good solid food and plenty of local color.” I was pleased to see that some color of a different sort had returned to his cheeks.

“Join us?” I asked Jed.

“Nice of you, Jessica, but can’t. Got to pick up a compass I had serviced over to Wiggins’s shop, put ‘er in one ’a the aircraft. See you later, Mr. Buckley. Catchin’ a four o’clock shuttle back to New York?”

“That’s the plan.”

“We’d best leave here ‘bout two. I’m plannin’ to use a bigger bird, twin engine 310H Cessna, just out ’a her regular inspection. Give you a more comfortable and faster ride back. She’ll cruise at two-twenty, two-thirty.”

“Sounds good to me,” Vaughan said, unfolding his lanky frame from the minivan. “And thanks for a nice ride here. Think about doing a book, Mr. Richardson. I’d be interested.”