A Deadly Snow Fall (18 page)

I tried to maintain my cool professional
stance but finally lost it and we hooted together until Mr. Beasley
gave us the stink eye.

“Poor, poor Egghead Edwin turned into an
omelet,” Daphne.

“Egged to death.” Me.

Laughing until our sides hurt but attempting
to keep it under control so as not to be the only people ever
ejected from Beasley’s, we finished our lunches. Daphne had to get
back to the gallery to meet a potential customer. I sat finishing
my tea. In the quiet space left by the removal of Daphne the
Jester, what I overheard changed everything.

Chapter Nineteen

“It never occurred to me that they might be
from my pile of bones. I’m so embarrassed. I’ve just been so busy
with spring planting. I simply forgot about the bones. My boyfriend
Peter was going to put them through his heavy-duty mulching
machine. It would have turned them into useful bone meal. If he
hadn’t had to go off-Cape to a conference, the bones would have
been safely buried and no one would have been any the wiser.”

I leaped off the bench as if it was an
ejection seat. Turning to look into the booth behind me, I saw
Daisy Buchanan of Land’s End Nursery, our local green thumb and
expert on everything that grows. Across from her sat my friend,
Tish Souza.

“Hi, Liz. What’s new?”

When I again found my voice I mumbled,
“Daisy, what did I overhear about a pile of bones? Sorry, I wasn’t
being a nosy parker but bones are kind of a hot topic in the
village right now.”

Daisy motioned me to come and join them. I
did. I waited. Finally, the latest mystery took on a whole new
aspect.

“I’m just so embarrassed, Liz. It’s all my
fault! I’ve been so busy. I simply forgot the pile of bones out
behind the greenhouse.”

A sentence I’d never imagined I’d hear from
the lips of such a fine woman. The woman who was going to be my
surrogate green thumb and turn my back garden into a productive
herb and vegetable wonderland.

“A friend of Peter’s owns a huge butcher shop
in Springfield and he offered me a truck load of bones. Bone meal
is excellent for gardens, you know. Peter has a high-powered
mulching machine that would have turned them into fine mulch. But,
Peter had to attend a landscapers’ conference in Ohio. So, the
enormous pile, unknown to me, was being scavenged by local
dogs.”

Daisy smiled guiltily. I nodded. Tish
laughed. Dee Dee delivered their desserts and we shared the news
with her. The bones mystery had been solved. Well, not completely.
The bone Patton had found in my garden could not have come from the
greenhouse. My backyard was completely fenced in and dog-proof.
Except for the one dog who’d been inside that fence. I didn’t
bother to mention that.

In the realm of sometimes truth is stranger
than fiction, one more human bone showed up. The universe can be
perverse. Sometimes the seemingly impossible becomes possible.
Sometimes, just when we think things could not get any crazier…they
do.

Standing on my back doorstep obviously
waiting for me to come home was Tish and Manny Souza’s daughter
Shelley. “Liz. At last. I’ve been waiting about twenty minutes. Oh
sorry, that sounded terrible. I mean, no reason you shouldn’t be
gone when I come to your house. Oh, I am blabbering here.”

Aware that usually happy-go-lucky Shelley was
obviously uncharacteristically upset and shaking I quickly opened
the door and guided the teenager to a chair at the kitchen table.
Plugging in the kettle I looked back at Shelley who was tearing a
paper napkin into tiny bits and creating a pile that would make a
fine bonfire for a mouse. Neither of us said anything until the hot
sweet tea was served.

“Drink it up, Shelley; it’ll relax you.”

“Sorry about being so impolite outside. Ma
would give me what for if she knew.”

“Don’t worry; your secret is safe with me.” I
smiled, hoping to put her more at ease.

“It’s this thing. This ugly thing that scared
the living hell out of me when I was picking spinach and chard in
my Dad’s garden. It was just sticking up, like pointing at me.
Ugh.”

She pulled a piece of paper towel out of her
canvas L.L. Bean bag and pushed it quickly across the table to me
as if it burned her fingers. My first reaction was to let it sit
there unopened, forever. However, knowing Shelley wanted me to see
what she’d found, I proceeded to look inside. “Oh.”

“Right. Damn thing nearly knocked me on my
ass. What the heck is it, Liz?”

Before I could answer, Shelley said, “It’s a
damned finger, isn’t it? So what was a finger doing in the
vegetable garden? Did my Dad plant it there? I don’t think so.”
Despite our mutual disgust and surprise at sitting with a whitened
finger bone between us, we both began to laugh uproariously. A
shock will do that.

“But why did you bring this to me Shelley?
You should take it to the police station.”

“That’s what Mom and Dad said, but I’m not
comfortable there. When I was young and dumb, two summers ago, I
was picked up for carrying a six pack of beer to a beach party and
since then, I’d rather not deal with the cops. Mom suggested that I
bring it to you because you are working on the Edwin Snow case. She
assumed you are also working on the bones case. Mom said that you
are the smartest person around.”

“Please thank your mother for her confidence
in me. Yes, definitely a phalange.”

“Yuck, you mean it’s a man’s…not a
finger?”

“No. No, I mean a finger.”

“Oh ya. That’s a lot better. I really thought
you meant….” Shelley blushed. “So, now that a mysterious dead
person has given us the finger, what do we do?’

Our laughter served to lighten the heaviness
of a reality I was not prepared to deal with. Not wanting to upset
Shelley any further, I simply offered to deliver the skeletal
finger to the police station.

“Thanks, Liz. You are a pal. Well, gotta go.
Mom’s expecting me to take over the store while she goes to her
needlepoint class. But you can be sure I am never going to look at
a ham bone, chicken wing or a standing rib roast the same ever
again. Do you think this is important, Liz?

“Yes, I think it is very important and you
will get credit for finding it. Hope that takes the onus off your
feelings about the police. All kids get into trouble of some kind.
I’m sure when I tell the Chief what a good thing you did by
reporting this, he will forget your crime spree of two years
ago.”

“Thanks. I’m outa here. Bye.”

The bone case was taking on a whole new
aspect. I headed into the Police Station to find James busy talking
to a couple whose outfits, complete with cameras strung around
their necks, gave them away immediately as tourists. From what I
could make out from an unobtrusive distance of about ten feet, was
that the woman’s purse had been grabbed on the street and they’d
come to file a complaint.

The red-faced husband said, “Ya, a floozy
with bright pink hair and wearing a long sequin covered cape over
what looked like green tights and a matching bra. Unbelievable!
What kind of a getup is that for a purse snatcher?”

Not sure what the man expected a purse
snatcher to wear, I continued to eavesdrop. James looked my way
surreptitiously. Turning back to the man, he put back his proper
cop mask.

“The wife and I came here because it seemed
like it ought to be a safer place than the Jersey shore with all
those mafia guys vacationing there. But since we got here we’ve
seen more damned crazily dressed people. You got some kind of early
Halloween thing goin’ on here, officer?”

The man went on to say that his wife’s purse
had been snatched by the person in the pink wig. James managed a
glance in my direction and I held up the plastic bag containing the
finger bones.

Assuring the couple that he would take their
description out onto the street and track the thief, he suggested
they go and have a nice cappuccino at the Green Genie coffee shop.
He took their cell phone number and promised to contact them within
the hour. The couple departed although their facial expressions
displayed a lack of confidence in a man of the law who would live
in a town full of weirdly dressed residents.

James quickly moved to my side and took me by
the elbow. He steered me into the meeting room where the attorney
had announced Edwin’s bequest to me. Déjà vu.

“Where? Who? When?” James looked through the
clear plastic and, as I had, knew immediately that the bone did not
belong to a goat or a seal.

“Shelley found it in her Dad’s vegetable
patch.”

“Time to back off, Liz. Please.”

“Pardon me, James. I do not recall you taking
over as my keeper.” I was coming on a little too harshly
considering I knew James had a perfect right to be worried about
me.

He looked so sweet and concerned that
momentarily I considered taking his advice and backing out of the
case. I’d certainly have enough on my plate with the inn during the
busy months ahead. Agatha Raisin’s strident voice shouted inside my
head. A good sleuth never backs down. Finish the job and show that
arrogant male what you are made of, woman. Never let down the
side.

Unfortunately, Agatha provided no avenue for
rebuttal or I would have shouted back, James is hardly arrogant and
I have nothing to prove to him. He is just concerned for my safety.
But I knew that my favorite sleuth was right and no matter what the
risk, I was not about to butt out. I was not a quitter.

“Please Liz; this could be dangerous. We have
a possible three crime situation here, two current and one cold
case, and if you continue digging you could be the
fourth…situation.”

I’d told him about Daisy Buchanan’s bone
pile, but we both knew this finger bone had not come from
there.

Leaving my concerned boyfriend with the
phalange, I left the station. Meaning to head back to the inn, I
had a sudden idea. Instead of turning down Honeysuckle Lane, I kept
on going down Commercial Street in the direction of the Fairies in
the Garden Shop. A loud commotion behind me grew louder and louder
until I just had to turn to see what was going on.

About six feet tall and wearing a bright
shiny pink wig, a silk cape covered in sequins flying out behind
him like a super hero in a comic book and exposing lime green
tights and matching bustier, the superhero, aka Bernie Williams,
nearly knocked me down as he flew by. He was carrying a bone and
swinging it like a baton.

As he passed, he shouted over his shoulder,
“I didn’t do it, the bone did! I’m telling the truth.”

Summer cop Eddie Mason, hired back early to
help with the crowds the Boston newspapers had brought to town,
also shot by me in hot pursuit. He jumped over a dog sitting in the
middle of the sidewalk and when the pink-haired runner tripped on
the uneven sidewalk, Eddie caught him by the flying cape. Sequins
went flying like confetti. The bone took off like a missile landing
at the feet of the aforementioned dog who gave it a thorough sniff
before rejecting it. Still adamantly protesting his innocence as
the cop clamped on the handcuffs, Bernie’s wig fell onto the road.
The dog also checked it out with even less interest.

Back at the station, the prisoner told his
tale. James and I laughed when he later told me the whole story of
Bernie, aka Busty Betty, who performed nightly at the Crown and
Anchor.

According to Bernie, the bone had been found
wedged into his dog’s house. When Bernie retrieved it, he recalled
his college anatomy and was sure it was human. “I had it under my
arm and I was headed to the station, when it grabbed a lady’s
purse. Next thing I knew, this guy was yelling and chasing me. I
thought he was a guy I owe some money to so I managed to lose him
when I turned down Mayflower Lane and ducked into the tumbled down
fish packing plant. The damn guy was shouting, ‘Thief, thief!’
Wasn’t about to try and deal with him. Then, I looked down and saw
what I’d done. What the bone had done.”

The bone had belonged to a robust steer and
had evidently come from Daisy’s bone pile. Bernie was released, the
purse returned and the couple left in a huff promising never to
return to Provincetown. James laughed when he told me the man was
overheard saying to his wife that they’d never come back to “this
town full of dizzy whackos in Halloween costumes.”

I’d continued on to the Fairies in the Garden
Shop, as the culprit was led away. I knew I’d be brought up to date
on the bone-wielding Bernie by James, later. Like having a police
band radio, I knew everything that went on in James’s professional
life. The little bell on the door made a Tinker Bell jingle as I
entered Emily’s shop. Once again, my sinuses screamed their
objection to the atmosphere of competing attar of roses, cinnamon,
citrus and assorted other scents.

Emily stepped through the beaded curtain from
the back room wearing a Donna Reed era housedress with high top
pink sneakers and a gray felt beret.

“Hello, Ms. Ogilvie-Smythe. Isn’t it a lovely
spring day? Hot chocolate?”

“Yes, it certainly is nice out there. (Nicer
by far than in this unbreathable atmosphere!). No thanks. Just
finished an iced coffee. How are you, Emily?”

“Just jolly. Thanks for asking. How are you,
Liz?”

“Great. I’ve come to ask a favor. It would
help the police a great deal,” I fibbed, “if you could look into
your crystal…Eloise…and see if she has any clues to the bone found
in my back garden.” Lying and playing into the hands of crazies was
becoming natural. What a tangled web we weave, when first we
practice to deceive.

My Scottish Granny always said, “Tis easier
to catch flies with honey than vinegar.” So, honey dripped from my
lips until I was sure I might suddenly take off and fly around the
shop like one of the ubiquitous fairies on a sugar high.