Cancelled by Murder (23 page)

B
en insisted I stay home for a couple of days, though the biggest casualty of my altercation with Andrea was my newest pair of sandals.

Andrea, on the other hand, who was in custody, had a serious wound in her gut. She'd fled into the construction site hoping to lay her hands on another gun, Reggie's this time. But my quick-witted friends had come through. Quinn had arrived at my house to find a burned pot of soup. He suspected my snooping had caught up with me and alerted Sunni. Her entire force of five officers and three patrol cars were engaged to find me.

“It was all about Quinn's quick-witted response to a burned pot of soup,” Sunni said when she and her crew arrived with a fresh pot.

“And Cassie's flashlight-as-weapon training,” Quinn said.

“I'm going out with a bang,” Ross had said. “Pun intended.
I may have underestimated the excitement of small-town policing. I doubt my new job will be as action-packed.”

Reggie was apparently as shocked as anyone, never suspecting that his wife was that wedded to their prosperous lifestyle or that easily moved to violence.

One surprise came when Sunni shared the solution to the mystery of my missing note from Anonymous. Jules had admitted to writing the warning notes to me. Once he learned that Cliff was involving me in the investigation, inviting me to discuss the finances of Daisy's Fabrics, he decided to try to cut me off at the pass. “His words,” Sunni said.

“You mean I have a reputation as a . . .”

“‘Troublemaker' might be the word you're looking for,” she said. “And I'm only sharing this with you because you might want to do something about the ease with which he was able to get into the post office. He simply printed out a key.” I gulped at the idea of printing a key until I remembered Jules's state-of-the-art three-dimensional printer. “He admits he was just messing with you, all in an effort to dissuade you from pursuing an investigation. He'd been experimenting with fashioning a skeleton key for a while and it was handy to try it on you.”

“And I obliged by sticking the note where everyone sticks notes, in their middle desk drawer.”

“Exactly.”

I had a vision of a time when physical keys would no longer be viable. “We're all going to be carrying around a key card or some kind of retinal scanning device,” I said.

“Or we'll all have chips in our hips,” she offered.

We laughed at that, realizing it wasn't much of a joke anymore.

*   *   *

Linda arrived on Thursday, as planned, and was introduced to Quinn and all my favorite people at a gathering at my home in the evening. Cliff Harmon had returned from Miami, expressing his undying gratitude to all of us. I declined any special thanks, mostly to assure Sunni that I was not considering a change of career. Most of the quilters had adjusted to the fact that one of their longtime members was guilty of the most grievous crime.

“How does someone go from making warm, beautiful quilts to being capable of such a violent act?” Linda asked.

“Her quilts weren't that beautiful,” Liv said, earning a smattering of applause.

“You were right to believe in this guy,” Ben told me, his arm around Cliff. “In spite of my advice.”

A pile of presents had arrived, too, as if it were my birthday.

“Since you're not going to tell us when it is, we'll keep celebrating on random days,” Sunni said.

“Such a deal,” I said.

“They've all been offering me a nice chunk of change to tell them the real date,” Linda said.

“What makes you think you know the right one?” I asked.

“Uh-oh, she's back. Snarky as ever,” Linda said.

More applause.

Besides lavishing large amounts of TLC on me since he returned, Quinn had a special gift for me: a soft mauve pillow imprinted with an image of the 1963 Eleanor Roosevelt stamp.
THE REAL DEAL,
it read, next to her picture, and
5¢
U.S. POSTAGE
in the corner. It had been cancelled at Hyde Park, New York 12538.

“How much is it worth?” Sunni asked.

Linda answered, “Cancelled, about twenty cents. On a pillow? I don't know. However much Quinn paid for it.”

“I spared no expense,” Quinn said.

“Talking about that, I haven't heard the end of the moneyman story. What's happening with Jules Edward?” Fran, the banker, asked.

“He's in the hands of the commonwealth,” Sunni said. “They'll straighten it out. He stole from more than just Cliff, and he'll pay. He's just relieved that he's not facing a murder charge.”

“Yeah, what's a little embezzlement charge?” Ben asked, shaking his head.

“I heard they found plastic keys that he made from that three-dimensional printer he was always showing off,” Molly said.

“I heard he was working on a kind of skeleton key that would open just about any door,” Liv said.

“I hope not,” Fran said.

“Is that right, Sunni?” Molly asked. “Skeleton keys from a printer?”

I held my tongue.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Sunni said. I wondered if she held out hope of ever being in a gathering as an ordinary citizen.

“I can't figure out why he didn't fool around with my books,” Liv said, “but our auditors say everything was clean.”

“Same for me,” Molly said.

“I guess I'm just lucky,” Cliff said.

“I'm guessing he was only beginning to test the waters at home,” Sunni said.

“What's that expression?” Cliff asked. “Don't steal where you sleep.”

“Something like that,” Ben said. “How about cutting the cake, Linda?”

She was happy to.

*   *   *

After the relief of a murder solved, the weekend parade and quilt show seemed anticlimactic.

My order of eight-cent Henry Knox stamps had come through and I decided to give a few to special friends. You never knew when you'd need exactly eight cents to complete the postage on a package. How cool to use the smiling face, topped by a wig, of a former bookseller turned Revolutionary War hero.

According to a spoilsport reporter for the
Town Crier
, further research into Henry Knox's trek across the state cast doubt on the legend that he passed through what was now North Ashcot. No matter—no one wanted to give up a parade.

“I can see why not,” Linda said. “It's been more than a month since the Fourth of July Parade. And isn't that what small towns are for?”

She was singing a different tune, however, when her cake was judged the best at the refreshment table. She “Woo-hoo'd” with the rest of us as she took possession of the blue ribbon. She promised all her new friends that she'd be back soon.

*   *   *

North Ashcot folks were happy that peace was restored. Linda had a new appreciation of small-town life. And Quinn and I had a growing appreciation for each other. Quite enough to ask of a week in the summer that had started out promising one kind of storm and hitting us with another kind.

I was ready to start my second year as postmaster.

Cassie Miller has been a fan of the U.S. Postal Service since she was a kid, sitting on her porch in North Ashcot waiting for the mail, crossing her fingers that there would be a letter with her name on it. She admits to sending away for things, just to receive letters or packages addressed to her. Free information kits for home improvement or health, brochures for colleges and universities all over the world—it didn't matter. Looking back, she figures she needed something to affirm her rightful place in the busy world she lived in. Cassie saved everything the mail carriers delivered in a special box that she'd covered with colorful adhesive paper. Now and then she'd pull the box from under her bed and go through the treasures: a flyer advertising the flea market in her school parking lot on Saturdays; information about life insurance that was secure and affordable; a catalogue of
new toys from a big store across the ocean in London (her father explained the meaning of the funny
L
that was like the dollar sign in the United States).

She still collects trivia and stories that involve the postal service. Here's a sampling, some funny, some strange, all very interesting.

INTERESTING COMMEMORATIVES THROUGH THE YEARS

Today, if they're in mint condition, some of these stamps are worth about fifty dollars, some not much more than their face value. If they're used, you can count on collecting about twenty cents.

1920:
one-cent stamp commemorating the pilgrim tercentenary.
THE MAYFLOWER
.

1954:
three-cent stamp commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of Columbia University.
MAN'S RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE AND THE FREE USE THEREOF
.

1957:
three-cent stamp honoring the fiftieth anniversary of Oklahoma statehood.
ARROWS TO ATOMS
.

1961:
four-cent stamp honoring Frederic Remington.
ARTIST OF THE WEST
.

2000:
thirty-three-cent stamp honoring
Seinfeld
.
SITCOM SENSATION
.

CHILDREN, FIRST CLASS

What was the easiest way to send your child for a visit to her grandparents across the country at the beginning of the twentieth century? Attach postage and mail!

In the early 1900s, it was legal to mail children through the U.S. Post Office. Hard as it is to picture, stamps were affixed to the child's clothing, and the child rode the rails accompanied by a letter carrier.

Cassie's favorite is the (true) story of a little girl who was sent by railway mail from her mother's home in Pensacola, Florida, to her father's home in Christiansburg, Virginia. Her weight was recorded as just under the fifty-pound limit, costing fifteen cents in parcel post stamps. Another well-documented shipment involved a two-year-old boy who was sent from Oklahoma to Kansas, at a cost of eighteen cents. A special delivery package if there ever was one!

The practice continued for a while even after a law was passed prohibiting humans in the mail.

POSTAL MUSEUM

Cassie loves to visit the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., associated with the Smithsonian Institution. The museum's galleries offer a comprehensive view of postal history from Colonial times to the present. On exhibit are items as small as a postal uniform button and as large as a retired delivery bus.

One of the highlights is an exhibit of an early mail crane,
a system of collection begun in 1869. A town's bag of outgoing mail was attached to the arm of a crane erected along a train track. As the train approached, a clerk on board used a hook to snatch the bag from the crane. The clerk then tossed the incoming mail onto the track for distribution to the town citizens. Except for a few timing glitches, the system worked pretty well for a while.

FUN FACTS

• The highest-elevation post office is in Alma, Colorado, 10,578 feet above sea level.
  
• The lowest-elevation post office is in Death Valley, California, 282 feet below sea level.
  
• The post office in Peach Springs, Arizona, has walk-in freezers for food destined for delivery to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule train.
  
• The five most common street names in the country are Main, Second, Oak, Maple, and Park, in that order.
  

Finally, Cassie's good friend in Boston, Linda Daniels, is a font of post office humor. Here are two of her favorites, though she admits she's paraphrasing classics.

• Consider the postage stamp: Its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
  
• I'm tired of being
  FED EX
  cessive numbers of post office jokes.
  

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