A House to Die For (A Darby Farr Mystery) (22 page)

It hasn't changed at all, thought Darby. She remembered the
fanlights on either side of the door, where her dog Rex always
pressed his wet nose. There was the pear tree, laden in late summer
with ripe Bartletts. She smiled at its graceful branches, even taller
now, reaching toward the upstairs bedrooms, the one on the far
right that had belonged to her parents ...

She swallowed painfully and got out of the truck. The same
mailbox, perhaps a bit more rusted, leaned at the edge of the driveway. There were the twin sugar maples, so flamboyantly orange
come fall. Darby looked up at the front door. It led to the kitchen, she knew, and memories of opening that door and seeing her parents were almost more than she could bear. She saw her mother
wearing a polka-dotted apron, standing at the stove concentrating
on a complicated recipe. She pictured her father, seated at the little
table, browsing happily through a sailing magazine. She shut the
truck's door.

The house represented the final straw, she realized. The tipping
point that had led her to exile from Hurricane Harbor for a decade. Darby Farr thought back to that June night when she'd confronted Aunt Jane. Something had unhinged inside her, something
furious and wild that had been bottled up for far too long

"You sold my house!" she'd screamed.

"Darby, really, it's just a house," Jane had said, her tone condescending. "And I made you money, for God's sake! Surely you are
old enough to realize that it is simply a building, nothing more!"

The voice of Laura Gefferelli broke her memory.

"The shed is over here." She pointed to a small structure on the
property line. That's new, Darby thought. Something the current
owners must have erected ...

"I'll go and ask for permission," Darby said.

The door was opened immediately by a slim young woman
with chin-length dark hair. A little girl sat coloring at a table, a box
of sixty-four crayons open and waiting. Darby remembered sitting
in the same spot and felt her knees grow weak.

The little girl stopped coloring. She smiled up at Darby and
showed her a picture of some kind of animal with stripes. Darby
complimented her and turned to the girl's mother.

"I'm Darby Farr, from Near & Farr Real Estate. Your father had
a patient, Lucy Trimble, who is a friend of mine. I'm helping Lucy, and she needs her medical records. I wondered if I might have a
look for her file."

The woman looked relieved. "I was afraid you were coming to
tell me we needed to move or something." She shrugged. "Sure, you
can look at his stuff. That shed is full of boxes." She opened a door
and pulled out a key chain. "The little one undoes the padlock."

Darby thanked her and took the keys. She crossed the grass to
where Laura was waiting.

"I tried the key from your office-no luck," Laura said.

Darby produced the keys she'd been given and tried the small
one in the padlock. The lock unhinged and the door swung open,
revealing stacks of cardboard banker's boxes. Fortunately, they
were arranged alphabetically with the "T" labeled box in plain
sight.

Darby knelt and opened the box. She flipped through the files,
searching for one with the name "Trimble" It has to be here, she
thought, rifling through them again, this time more slowly.

"Nothing," she said. "Perhaps there's another `T' box? Or it
could be misfiled, I suppose..."

Laura frowned. "It will take us all night to look through these
boxes. Truthfully, I have some work I need to do at the church."
"

I guess the good news is that it's not going to be easy for Chief
Dupont to find Lucy's file either," said Darby.

A bark of a laugh echoed outside the small shed. "Nothing's
easy for me," said the chief, his bulky form blocking the light.
"Nothing at all, Darby Farr."

Two hours later, Darby was seated on a comfortable upholstered chair in the cozy Kendall cottage with a bag of ice on her
ankle. She'd showered, dressed, and driven the truck to meet Miles,
and was now describing to him how Chief Dupont had caught her
and Laura rifling through the files from Dr. Hotchkiss' practice.

"I swear he followed us there, Miles," she fumed. "He made a
point of telling me his secretary used to work for Hotchkiss. He
wanted me to go looking for that file and he followed us."

Miles handed her a glass of Merlot. "The chief is no dummy,"
he said. "He may look like one, but he's not." He lifted his glass.
"Cheers"

Darby lifted hers halfheartedly and took a sip. She leaned back
in the chair. "I'm just so discouraged about the whole thing. Lucy
didn't kill Emerson Phipps, I know that, but the evidence is starting to stack up against her."

Miles sat in a chair across from Darby and took another sip of
wine. "What do you say we try to recreate the crime? Our dinner
is simmering gently on the stove, and this kind of thing is right up
my alley, so to speak."

Darby smiled. "So I'm to see Miles Porter, Investigative Journalist, in action?"

"That's right." He grinned. "Now-the murder took place on
what-Sunday, right?"

"Yes"

"Okay. Here's Fairview." He picked up a coaster and placed it
on an ottoman. "And this pack of matches is Emerson Phipps." He
placed the matches on the coaster. "Phipps drives his shiny BMW
over to Fairview and parks it in the front. Maybe he goes in the
house, maybe not."

"The chief has found no evidence that Phipps entered the
house."

"So, he parks and then walks around the back, right?"

"Right. He circled the property and went to the garden cottage, where quite possibly, the murderer was waiting." She thought
a moment. "The chief has found no evidence of tire tracks, so that
person-" Darby picked up a pencil, "-came on foot."

"Or flew," joked Miles.

She took the pencil and placed it by the coaster and matches.
"We need something to represent the cottage."

"See, you're getting into it," said Miles, reaching behind him for
another coaster. "This one's different, will it do?"

"I guess it will have to." Darby placed the pencil atop the coaster.
"So the murderer is waiting in the cottage. Emerson Phipps enters
the cottage and is killed. The murderer leaves, perhaps taking the
time to plant evidence first."

"Such as?"

"The jumpsuit and the cigarettes. The killer left no fingerprints
on the garden shears nor on the statue, and none were found on
the cottage door. Obviously the killer touched these things, so he
must have been wearing gloves."

"Good point," noted Miles.

"Now, the killer left only those things. Why?"

"Because they incriminated only one person: Lucy Trimble."
"

11 Right"

"Do you think we should be looking for someone who hates
Lucy Trimble?" Miles asked.

"I thought about that, but I sense that Lucy was just a convenient
scapegoat for the killer, a way to throw the police off the track. I
think we need to concentrate on the people who want Fairview."

"Besides Phipps, there's Peyton, right?"

"Peyton Mayerson, and the money men behind her. Peyton
was pretty desperate after the planning board meeting. She needed
to see her way out of that situation. She might have felt desperate
enough to kill Phipps to ensure her position as the buyer."

"But how would Peyton have known about the back-up? That
planning board meeting didn't occur until the next day. On the
day Phipps was killed, Sunday, Peyton still assumed she would be
Fairview's owner."

"Someone might have told her," Darby said. "Someone who
knew what was going to happen... "

She snapped her fingers. "Soames Pemberton knew what would
happen the next day. He had the old deed prohibiting liquor and
he knew that would keep the planning board from granting the
zoning change. Suppose he made Peyton Mayerson pay for the information, and when she realized that her plans were in jeopardy,
she killed Emerson Phipps."

"And framed Lucy?"

"Exactly. She could have easily gone to her studio, stolen a jumpsuit and a pack of cigarettes, worn the suit to kill Phipps, and then
planted the evidence."

"When did Peyton arrive on Hurricane Harbor?" asked Miles.

"Saturday morning. That gave her plenty of time to find out
about Phipps, hatch a plan, and execute it the next day. Then when
the planning board meeting denied her the changes, she put on a
big act about how angry she was."

Darby thought a moment. "Do you have a pad of paper? I need
to write a few things down."

Miles handed her a legal pad and a pen.

"We need to see if anyone noticed Peyton going into Lucy's
house on Saturday. That's when she would have stolen the jumpsuit and cigarettes."

Darby looked at Miles. "And the paintings! Two of Lucy's works
are missing from the studio. I wouldn't put it past Peyton to have
helped herself to a little artwork while she was there."

"Where was Lucy on Saturday? Wouldn't she remember if Peyton came to her house?"

"I don't know." She added another note to her list. "We'll find
out Lucy's whereabouts for Saturday.

"Now Miles, the other suspect in this murder is Soames Pemberton. Fairview was built on property that was once his family's
land. He lives in the woods that abut the estate, and I think the
pending sale enraged him."

"Is he the kind of person who would not only bash someone
else's head in, but try to ruin the life of an innocent person in the
meantime?"

"Exactly," said Darby. "A person with nothing to lose." She
stopped and sniffed the air. "Dinner smells fabulous. Are you sure
we're not ready to eat?"

Miles Porter smiled and rose to his feet. "We're ready," he said,
proffering a hand to Darby. "Dinner is served."

"I'VE NEVER TASTED SUCH delicious chowder," Darby exclaimed,
sitting back in her chair in the Kendall cottage's cozy dining room.
"Haddock, right? And this bread is terrific, too. So moist"

"I'm glad you like it," Miles said, smiling. "I must confess, I felt
under some pressure, what with your being a gourmet cook and
all..."

"My mother was the gourmet cook," Darby corrected. "I can
barely boil water." She took another sip of her wine and felt it
warm her body. Outside it had started to rain, but in the cottage,
she felt warm and safe.

"Remember what you said about some mysteries being unsolvable?"

Miles nodded. "Are you thinking that we won't figure out who
killed Emerson Phipps?"

"No. I was thinking about my parents and the mystery of their
disappearance." She shifted slightly in her chair and met his earnest gaze.

"I'd like to hear what happened, if you want to tell me," he
said.

Darby let out a long sigh. "It's been awhile-a long while-since
I told anyone about that day. But I think somehow I need to. With
the murder of Emerson Phipps I feel like my past is coming back at
me, and I need to face this mystery before I can prove Lucy Trimble
is innocent."

She took a last spoonful of her soup and thought back to the
day her world had changed, and then she began her story.

"The summer I was thirteen, I was on top of the world. My
dad ran the sailing program, my mother showed up with picnics
of wonderful French delicacies, my parents were in love with life
and with me, and I was the happiest kid in the world. It was a
beautiful August afternoon. Classes were finished at the club and
my dad asked me if I wanted to go with him for a sail. We had a
sleek boat-an Alden 48-just gorgeous. But I was meeting Lucy
Trimble to go swimming, so I said no. Just then my mother arrived. I remember she was wearing a pair of white shorts and a
red-checked blouse. She was laughing and smiling, and when my
dad mentioned that they could have a date, she said, `Why not?'
They got in the dinghy and waved goodbye, and I pedaled off on
my bicycle to meet Lucy. I never saw my parents again."

"My God."

"That afternoon, the winds picked up and the National Weather
Service issued a small craft advisory. I was home by five o'clock, but
I didn't begin to worry until six P.M. I called the harbor master and
he called the Coast Guard. Chief Dupont must have heard the call,
and he took me to stay with the Trimbles at Fairview. The next day
Jane Farr flew up from Florida. I'd met her only once before. The Coast Guard searched for a week and recovered parts of the sailboat.
But my parents' bodies were never found."