A Deadly Snow Fall (24 page)

James appeared with Emily at his side. She’d
been away at a gift show in Atlanta and had just alighted from the
Greyhound Bus as James passed on his way back to the station. James
had seen the sign on the Fairies in the Garden shop when he went,
on the Chief’s orders, to bring her in for questioning. It said
that she’d be back on Tuesday, but although it was Tuesday, James
had no idea of when to expect her. He was headed back to report
when there she was. Inviting her to come with him because the Chief
wanted to speak with her, she’d left her suitcase in the pharmacy
with Miquette, the pharmacist, and went along.

“Good day, Emily. Just a few questions.” The
Chief stood, gentlemanly. I hoped his sights were not set once
again on dating the little woman whose sidekick was a crystal ball.
It did, however, occur to me that Emily might be incapacitated
without her trusty companion, Eloise. I’d never had a conversation
with her minus the glassy controlling orb.

The Chief, naturally, led off the
questioning. “Emily we need to talk about your relationship to
Edwin Snow III. Just take your time and tell it like it was.
Everything you can remember about what Edwin talked about when he
came to you for help when he was troubled and anxious.” The Chief
pulled the ever-present bottle of aspirins and accompanying glass
of tap water toward him.

After a brief pause, during which Emily
flicked a piece of lint off of her violet linen jacket, checked her
curls that never moved because of copious amounts of hair spray and
smoothed her white skirt, she spoke. What came out did so like a
corked volcano suddenly free to burst its top, to the utter
surprise of us all. I wondered if Emily had been preparing herself
for this moment and could hold back the roaring lava no longer.

“Miserable of old miser. Laughed at me when I
told him who I was. Wouldn’t part with a nickel for his own flesh
and blood. Got what he deserved. I gave him my birth certificate
and a letter from my mother, but still he refused to accept my
story. I hated the man. Hated him. Got even by toying with his
little egg head.”

This took the poor unprepared Chief by total
surprise. As if hoping to escape the lava flow, he rolled his chair
back a few feet until it was stopped by the bookcase behind him,
toppling two books onto the floor.

James interjected when it looked as if the
Chief was having difficulty finding words to lob back at Emily. “So
Emily, you were blackmailing Edwin because your mother, Rosita
Gonsalves, told you he was your father but he refused to recognize
that fact. Correct?”

“He was also going to make my mother look
like a common whore in that stupid book he was writing. I meant to
see to it that he didn’t do that. I just wanted what was rightfully
mine.”

Chief Henderson, at last in control of his
voice, motioned to James to let him take over. “Did you attempt to
blackmail Edwin Snow, Emily?”

“At first, yes. But that was going nowhere so
I had to change my tactic.”

“I am told that you sometimes vexed Edwin.
Purposely upset the old man. Was that part of your new tactic,
Emily?” This from me from my interviews with the tiny but mighty
lady.

“I wasn’t sure where it was going, Chet, at
that time. I just knew that I was getting even for what he did to
my mother. Anyone would have done the same. Rich as Croesus he was
and yet he never sent us a dime. We’d have starved before Mom
married that sweaty stinking hog farmer if Mary hadn’t sent us
those checks every month.” Emily was nearly foaming at the
mouth.

“When was the last time Edwin came to your
shop, Emily?”

“Let’s see, that would have been the night
before he…jumped from the Monument, Chet.”

“What was the reason for his visit on that
night, Emily?”

“He wanted something, some information that
only Eloise could provide.”

“You will need to tell me what that was. In
detail, Emily. Do you understand? Every word that you can
recall.”

“Certainly, Chet. I am a good citizen and if
I can help, then, I certainly will.” This abrupt change from
flaming lava to perfect citizen didn’t fool me. The woman who knew,
as Daphne had said, “where all the bodies are buried in this town,”
although she meant to be sarcastic, held the best hand in this card
game. I was becoming a font of metaphors.

“Please, remember, Emily, that you must tell
us the truth so that we can help you if you are innocent.”

“Innocent? Innocent of what, Chet?” Emily
actually looked confused. But, as I had seen her in the course of
her so-called “profession,” I knew that she was an Academy Award
class actress.

“Emily, I may as well tell you that someone
saw Edwin Snow at your back door on the night of the snowstorm. You
say he was there the night before his death, but it seems he also
showed up shortly before his fall from the Pilgrim Monument. Is
that true?”

Emily coughed and then continued in a shaky
voice. “Eloise was having an off night when he came that first
time. He couldn’t get what he needed, so he returned the following
night. He was troubled by his memory’s loss of some important names
and dates for his silly book and wanted Eloise to contact Edward
Granger.” Emily took a deep breath. “That’s when I got the
idea.”

“The idea?” The Chief reached for the
aspirins, but realized that he’d just taken two and put back the
bottle. “You know, Emily, somehow I cannot imagine anything being
important enough for the frail old man to wander into town during a
terrible snowfall.”

“He did. Do you want to hear this or not,
Chet?”

Emily was becoming the inquisitor. Could she
get away with taking over the investigation? I wondered.

“Proceed.” Chief Henderson put his aching
feet up on the stool under his desk and leaned back as if preparing
for a tall tale. Two hundred and twenty-five feet tall, I
wondered.

“I quickly decided that I could get even with
him for all the misery he’d caused me and my dear mother over the
years. As I’ve struggled to hold my business together through good
times and bad, increasing rents and higher and higher heating and
electric bills, he just sat around counting his money and doing no
good with it.” Her voice rose to a crescendo as she twisted the
handkerchief in her hands as if she was wringing her denying
father’s puny neck.

“So, I looked into Eloise and”

Chief Henderson groaned audibly. “Sorry,
Emily; go on. Just please, do stick to the facts.”

I was tempted to remind him that Emily’s
so-called “facts” came from a galaxy far, far away. But instead, I
held my tongue.

“The plan to finally get even came to me in
such a rush I felt dizzy. Looking into Eloise’s face, I told Edwin
that Edward Granger had a message for him, a very important
message. The old man’s face lit up like a Fourth of July
firecracker and I knew I had him. Funny thing is, at that point I
wasn’t exactly sure of how I was going to do it, but I was sure
that the good fairies would watch over and guide me to a solution.
Not for getting the money I deserved. No, that was a lost cause by
then. But at least I could get my soupçon of revenge.”

“Emily, does this idea include getting the
old man to climb all the way up the Pilgrim Monument?”

“I’ll get to that, Chet.” Emily gave the man
a look of annoyance as if she might be cheated out of her full
performance. Checking her plastic curls, once again, she
continued.

“Actually, I didn’t need Eloise that night. I
let her rest and I took over although, of course, Edwin thought she
was contacting that drunken artist Edward Granger.”

“What on earth could you have told Edwin that
would have convinced an old man to climb way up there, Miss Emily?”
The chief moved forward to the edge of his chair, cigar burning
down in his ashtray right under the “No Smoking in Public
Buildings” sign.

Emily’s smile had the quality of a snake
eyeing a tasty mouse directly in its path.

“It was just so simple. I told him that
everything he needed was safe in a journal the artist had hidden up
in the Monument in a secure place and it was just waiting for
him.”

We all gasped. Emily sat like the Cheshire
cat. Was she purring?

The Chief used the old inquisitor’s trick of
saying nothing thus unnerving the suspect which, according to the
police interrogators’ manual, usually brought forth jewels.
Eventually the little woman could bear it no longer and spoke.

“You know how old people are. That night,
despite the snow, Edwin Snow just had to have a few bits of
information that only a dead man, Edward Granger, knew. Edwin was
dying, the doctor had told him. So, he had to rush to finish the
book.”

The Chief groaned--either in physical or
mental pain. “So, you convinced the old man to climb with you to
find these secret journals that you knew were not there. That
sounds a bit silly, Emily.”

“Not so silly Chet, when you consider that I
hated the old man and anything that annoyed him pleased me. I knew
where the key was in your office because I’d worked here cleaning
when I first came to town. Remember that, Chet?”

Chief Chet nodded.

“I slipped in the back door that is never
locked because of the public restrooms. Only I knew that the door
to the main hallway was also unlocked. It was easy. I knew all the
secrets from my time here. I slipped in and took the key to the
Monument and slipped out undetected.”

The Chief looked over his shoulder at the
pegboard where at least a hundred keys hung on key chains, bits of
string and what appeared to be plastic tie wraps. He shook his head
in disbelief. Or admiration?

Chief Henderson suddenly swung the boat
around onto a new track and threw us all into a muddle, if not the
sea.

“Tell me, Emily, that crystal ball of yours,
it’s just a lot of show business, right?”

“Chet, that lump on your hip is benign. Don’t
worry about it anymore. Don’t waste your time and money on having
it biopsied. It’s just a pocket of stray fat. Happens with age,
particularly in men with gout.”

The Chief did a double take and coughed to
cover his astonishment. Actually, the week before, the Chief had
driven all the way to Hyannis to have the suspicious lump biopsied
and the report had come in just that morning. The doctor had told
him on the phone just minutes before James arrived with Emily,
Don’t worry Chet the lump is just a pocket of stray fat, happens
later in life.

I decided that I’d better jump in before the
situation steered too far off track and Emily was giving us all
health advice. “So you and Edwin climbed up at the top of the
Monument and you hit him with what, a baseball bat, a metal rod?
Then, tossed him over. Right, Emily?”

“Ah, you have a fine imagination, Liz. You
ought to write mysteries; you have a knack. Must be from reading
all those silly cozies you and your friends read instead of serious
literature. Softens the brain to read such drivel but those cozy
writers do make a nice bit of change selling that foolishness. No,
Liz, that was not quite what happened. You see, I am not a murderer
although you would all like to think so.”

If surprise could have a sound, it rang
loudly and clearly around the Chief’s office at that moment. Like a
bell rung too close to the ear, Emily’s statement of denial shook
us all equally. But something that popped into my head at that
moment troubled me far more

What if clever Emily named Eloise as the
killer of Edwin Snow III? A very fine ploy for an insanity defense
if ever there was one. I was sure at that moment that that was
exactly what the woman had in mind. You had to be pretty foxy to
get people to pay for what she offered them in the guise of
“science.” If anything, Emily was a wily fox

The Chief spoke. “All right, Emily, just take
us through what happened the night old Edwin climbed the Monument
believing that there was a journal waiting up there for him. Just
take us along with you and him, step by step. If you didn’t murder
him, then you’d better have a pretty good explanation of how he
ended up dead on the snow with his skull cracked. I can tell you,
based on a credible source, that the man’s head was smashed in
before he landed. So, if you didn’t crack him on the head and he
didn’t smash in his own head, then how did the poor man’s skull end
up like a broken egg? Before he hit the ground.”

Interesting, I thought, how the egg reference
kept cropping up in discussing Edwin Snow. Humpty Dumpty had a
great fall.

Emily sat up straighter. “I do admit to
considering killing him. After all, he denied being my father,
denied me my rightful inheritance, insulted me repeatedly and
scorned my dear mother. However….”

“Let’s just cancel the dramatics, Emily, and
cut to the chase.”

Emily nodded at the Chief. “Before I closed
up the shop and left for the Pilgrim Monument, I put an axe in my
backpack, just in case. I keep it for chopping ice off the sidewalk
so my customers don’t slip. I didn’t actually believe that I’d have
the courage to use it, but it was like a security blanket. The snow
was coming down hard as the appointed hour approached. Part of me
hoped that Edwin would chicken out on such a terrible night, but
part of me believed that he wouldn’t dare. He needed what Eloise
had promised him if he was going to complete that silly book before
he died. The clock was ticking.”

“So, you helped him climb all those stairs
not sure what you were going to do when you got to the top,
right?”

“Not quite. I refused to tell him which stone
the journal was hidden behind. Eloise had told me, I told Edwin, so
he’d need me there to identify it. I offered to go up first, find
the hiding place and remove the journal. Then, he’d come up.”

“Wait, why did he fall for that, Emily? I
mean, you could have found it and brought it to him. Why climb
himself at his age and in his condition?”