A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) (11 page)

Chapter 12

              “Tanner’s dog?! I thought it died during the hurricane last summer,” Lindsay said. Her mind was like a wet sponge, so sodden that it struggled to absorb this new revelation.

              “So did everybody,” Warren said, shaking his head in amazement. “Tanner said she last saw him when he got caught up in the creek at the back of their property. Ringo fell in, and Paul went in after him. Tanner managed to pull Ringo out, but Paul got swept downstream. They never found his body.”

“You’re not going to tell me that he somehow got swept all the way out to the Atlantic coast and ended up in Aunt Harding’s backyard, are you? And anyway why is he a Doberman? I assumed that Paul was another of those little orange fluffballs.”

“No. Paul was my dad’s dog. After Dad died, Paul went to live with Tanner and Gibb. My mama didn’t like all the shedding. You know how particular she is about her house. They got the others after that and they all got named after he did.”

              Warren crouched down and unhooked the dog from the rope that held him. “Hey, buddy. It’s good to see you.” The Doberman pressed himself against Warren, his whole body wagging with happiness. 

“What are we going to do with him?” Lindsay asked.

“Take him back to Tanner and Gibb, I suppose.”

“But he can’t stay tied up out here while you conduct your investigation.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Do you think he could stay with you at the hotel? I could drop him off later, once you get settled.”

Before she could answer, one of the Duck police opened the kitchen door and called out to them. “Detective Satterwhite, could you come in here a minute? We’ve run into a bit of a problem.”

              Warren gave the dog one last pat. “Stay,” he commanded as he walked toward the house. Warren made no gesture for Lindsay to follow him, so she was left to assume that the command applied to her, too. She knelt down beside the Doberman, stroking his smooth black fur.

              “Paul, eh? Can I still call you Kipper?” The dog lay down in the sand next to her, letting out a heavy sigh. “I can’t believe you were Tanner and Gibb’s dog.” Kipper looked at her with doleful eyes. “It’s not your fault. Tanner and Gibb aren’t your real parents, and those oversized barking hamsters aren’t your real brothers. You know what I find hardest to explain? You might be thinking that it’s the fact that you ended up here, hundreds of miles from home in my aunt’s house. You’re wrong. It’s the fact that you willingly risked your life to try to save Ringo during the hurricane. You’re either very brave, or you’re a complete moron.”

Warren poked his head out the back door. “Lindsay, can you come in here a minute?” 

              Lindsay clipped Kipper back onto the rope and went inside. Within the short span of time since she left, the house had begun to morph into a full-scale crime scene. She was asked not to move anything in the house without permission and to cover her shoes with little plastic booties to protect any evidence that might be lurking on the floors. Two uniformed officers stood next to the gun safe in the corner of the dining room. Warren pointed to it. “I don’t suppose you know the combination? I expect the walls of this sucker are around about two inches thick. Even with a big drill, it’s gonna take us a mighty long time to get through that.”

“I don’t know it. I doubt she ever told anybody. Don’t policemen know all the tricks for picking locks and cracking safes?”

“I could probably pick a lock, if it came to it, but these dial safes aren’t all that common anymore. In banks and even most private homes, mostly it’s digital or biometric,” Warren said. “And the usual way a criminal opens a safe is to pick the whole thing up, carry it somewhere quiet, and smash the tar out of it ‘til it cracks. I’m not even sure that’s possible with this monster, and since we might need evidence out of here, I’d rather avoid that method altogether.”

A cloudy memory rose to the surface of Lindsay’s mind. “Actually, there is somebody who might be able to get it open. I remember when I was little, there was one time the twirly dial on the combination lock got stuck. A guy from Duck came over and fixed it.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve got a name and address?” Claire asked.

              “I don’t even know if he’s still alive. He was old even then. I think he owned an antiques store. He was a High Tider.”

Warren looked confused, but the others instantly knew what she meant. Natives of the far southeast of North Carolina, especially Harker’s Island and Ocracoke, spoke with a distinctive regional accent. The way that they swapped the “I” sound in words for an “oy” had given rise to the nickname “high tiders”—the fishermen in those parts referred to the “hoy toyd” instead of the more customary North Carolina pronunciation “hah tahd.” 

“Wynn Butterworth,” said the elder of the two Duck detectives, snapping his fingers in recognition.

              “That’s the guy,” Lindsay nodded.

“Do you think you can bring him out here?” Warren asked the Duck policeman. “Let him know it’s urgent. Two of Patricia Harding’s weapons have shown up at the scenes of violent crimes. We’ve gotta find out what else is, or isn’t, in that safe.”

Claire led Lindsay into the spare bedroom to help her pack. Although the deputy sheriff kept up a friendly conversation the entire time, Lindsay got the distinct impression that the purpose of Claire’s presence wasn’t to assist her, but rather to keep an eye on her. When Lindsay had finished collecting the belongings that she needed, Claire said, “Reverend Harding, do you think you’re ready to give a statement now? I’m sorry to ask you when you’ve been through such a terrible ordeal, but we need to move quickly. There’s good reason to believe that someone very dangerous is on the loose.”

              The two women settled into the same high-backed wooden chairs next to the pellet stove where Lindsay and Sarabelle had sat only a few hours before. Claire placed a digital recorder on the table between them—as Warren had said, she was clearly a by-the-book gal. She asked Lindsay to recount the discovery of the body as precisely as she could. Meanwhile, Claire made notes and murmured “uh-huh” at regular intervals.

“Now let’s go back to last night. How did you get out here, Reverend? Detective Satterwhite said you left your car in Corolla.”

              For some reason, it irked Lindsay to realize that Warren and Claire must have been talking about her behind her back, sharing her evidence. “That’s right. My car’s a two-wheel drive, so I got a ride from Simmy—Chrysanthemum Bennett. She lives in Corolla in the house called ‘Sailor Girl.’ I don’t know the real address. It’s the pink one near the lighthouse.”

“Did Ms. Bennett spend the night here last night?”

              “No.”

Claire arched her eyebrows. “Which bedroom did your aunt use? It looks like all the beds have been slept in.” Lindsay realized that she’d waited far too long to mention her mother’s presence in the house. She hadn’t set out to lie, but now there was no way to answer Claire’s question without looking like she’d been purposely withholding the information.

              “She slept in the bedroom at the back, off the kitchen. And my mother, Sarabelle Harding, slept in the other one.”

              Claire looked at Lindsay over the top of her reading glasses. “Your mother?”

“She’s been living here for the past few months.”

              “And she was Patricia’s niece?”

“Um, no. Patricia Harding was my father’s aunt. Sarabelle was her niece by marriage, although actually, my parents are divorced now, so I suppose she was her ex-niece by marriage.” Lindsay realized that she was babbling, but there seemed to be no coherent way to describe the living arrangements.

“Sarabelle Harding? As in the Sarabelle Harding that used to date Leander Swoopes, who is wanted for questioning in Lydia Sikes’s murder?”

Lindsay couldn’t meet Claire’s gaze. “Yeah, that’s the one,” she mumbled.

              “So your aunt and your mother remained close, after your parents’ divorce?”

“Not exactly. No. I mean, they weren’t really close to begin with, as far as I know.”

              “But they lived together?”

              “It looks that way.”

Annoyance crept into Claire’s carefully-measured words. “Where is Sarabelle Harding now? Was she here when you woke up this morning?”

              “She was, but she left.”

              Claire waited for Lindsay to say more, but she couldn’t think how to begin. Should she start with her childhood—the loneliness of the years spent in this house? With her mother’s descent into criminality and her purported redemption? With the events of the previous summer, when her mother led a dangerous criminal smack into the middle of her life? Was it possible to unpick more than 30 years of crossed wires and tightly-bound knots of emotion and lay the whole story of her family flat and straight so another person could understand it?

The detective’s initial warmth and friendliness had frosted over. Her questions now flew at Lindsay like tiny bits of ice. “Reverend Harding, where’s your mother?”

“I honestly don’t know. I don’t have any way to contact her, either. When I told her that Aunt Harding had been killed, she seemed terrified. She threw all her stuff in a suitcase and took off.”

“Took off how? Your car isn’t here and your aunt’s truck is still outside.  Did she have her own car?”

“No. I guess she must’ve walked.”

“If she walked, why didn’t the Duck officers see her?” Claire asked sharply. “They came up that road only a few minutes later. They would’ve noticed if they’d seen a lone woman walking along.”

The same question had occurred to Lindsay, but she had no answer. There were trees and bushes along the road in some places, but this time of year, they were mostly bare of leaves. Try as she might, she couldn’t picture her mother—wearing high heeled boots and dragging a suitcase—diving into the undergrowth for cover as police cars bore down on her. “I don’t know. Aunt Harding’s was the only vehicle that was here.”

The front door swung open, giving Lindsay a temporary respite from the increasingly insistent line of questioning. The older officer from the Duck police entered, accompanied by Wynn Butterworth. The elderly man leaned heavily on an elaborately-carved walking stick. In his free hand, he carried a large brown leather bag of the type that old-fashioned country doctors were known to use. Butterworth was at least 50 pounds overweight, and he puffed with the effort of climbing the small set of stairs that led up to the front porch. His eyes immediately locked on Lindsay.

“Well, you must be Little Miss Lindsay, all grown up,” he began. “I remember seeing you around when you was just a tiny, little thing. Have to say, you got your mama’s good looks. I’d’ve almost reckoned that that was a young Sarabelle Harding sitting there by the fire.” Even after many decades of living in Duck, his High Tide brogue hadn’t been altered in the slightest. For him, “fire” was “foyer” and “sitting there” was a single word— “settinehr.” A neatly-trimmed goatee sat in the middle of Wynn Butterworth’s oval-shaped head, giving him the appearance of a bearded egg. If he’d been a Midwesterner, people might have remarked on how pale and unwrinkled his skin was for someone nearing his ninth decade of life. However, for an Outer Banks native to have such a smooth, white complexion at any age made him practically a freak of nature.

              Warren emerged from the dining area to greet the elderly man. “Thanks for coming, Mr. Butterworth. We hate to interrupt your family’s Christmas like this.”

“Least I can do. Patty was an old friend. I’ve known her since the War.” He gave a sad-eyed smile. “That’s World War II, for the young’uns.”

“You mentioned Sarabelle Harding,” Claire cut in. “In what capacity do you know her?”

“Know?” Butterworth said. “Knew, more like. Back when she was first going with Patty’s nephew, they used to come out here now and again. That was years and years ago. Then again, when you get to be my age, most things were years and years ago.”

“So you haven’t seen her lately?” Claire asked.

“Can’t say that I have, ma’am. One of my customers said she thought she saw her working at the Food Lion, but I told her that she must be mistaken. No way a woman like that would end up frosting cupcakes at the Food Lion! That Sarabelle was a real beauty. Local boys’d snap their necks trying to get a look at her. From what I heard, she was nearly as wild as Patty was back in her own day.”

“Aunt Harding was wild?” Lindsay asked. It felt alien to hear her family history discussed in such a natural, affable way. Aunt Harding had never told stories from her past unless they were specifically calibrated to demonstrate how modern society was going to the dogs. Believing that Patricia Harding used to be wild was almost as hard as believing that she used to be young.

“Oh Lord, yes! Patty and Simmy Bennett was two regular firecrackers. Simmy was the life and soul of every party, and Patty was always right there beside her. From the time she was 13, your Aunt Patty could outdrink an oysterman. I know y’all must be in a state of mourning right now, but you should come on by my store when you’re feelin’ up to it, Miss Lindsay. I’ll tell you a story or two.” He smiled sympathetically at her and then looked around the room. “Old place looks pretty much the same as ever. I expect that the gun safe is still over yonder—don’t reckon anybody could’ve moved that beast. Her daddy bought it years and years ago. I heard that he spent two month’s wages on it and it took six men to load it into a rowboat and bring it across the Sound.” As he spoke, he worked his way over to the safe, relying heavily on his cane. To Warren he said, “Son, could you pull up one of them chairs for me? I’m mommucked. These old legs don’t jig like they used to.”