Cancelled by Murder (6 page)

T
o an outsider, it might have seemed like a normal Thursday morning at the post office, with customers lined up, glad to be out of the summer humidity, exchanging complaints (“The line isn't moving fast enough”; “The grocery store is out of lemon-flavored sparkling water”) and pleasantries (“It's much cooler this week after the storm”; “Fall TV shows will be starting soon”).

But my guess was that, like me, most of the residents felt a pall over the town, a heavy cloud bearing the weight of the drastic escalation of bad news that had shaken us, from a possible casualty of the small storm, to the accidental death of a member of the community, to the declared murder verdict in the case of Daisy Harmon. Aunt Tess always said you could smell a storm, even after it had passed, and I thought the observation was never more true than now.

I suspected it wasn't just Sunni who looked at everyone
with suspicion today. It was hard to trust any but our closest friends. I recognized a few people from South Ashcot who often came by when their post office lobby was even more crowded than ours. My immediate reaction when I saw the interlopers: Had Sunni thought of looking for motives among those nonresidents of North Ashcot? Maybe one of them was an unsatisfied fabric shop customer. Or someone who was part of an old feud that had resurfaced across town borders?

I had enough to do, with more than the usual number of money orders today and a couple of people who needed help wrapping unwieldy packages, but in between, my mind went to Daisy's unsolved murder. I longed to know how the investigation was proceeding. I was dismayed that my status as best friend of the chief of police gave me no insight into the progress, if any, she and her staff were making, or what they were focusing on.

Now and then I replayed sayings from Daisy in my head. One was embroidered on a T-shirt she had made up for each new member of the group:
QUILTERS ARE PIECEMAKERS
. Another was a sign above the door to the back room of her shop:
BEFORE ANTIDEPRESSANTS THERE WAS QUILTING
. And her most useful:
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU SCRAPS, MAKE A QUILT
. It was hard to reconcile her playful outlook with the way she had died.

Cliff had texted me sometime during the night saying he'd like to come by with lunch “to firm up some plans.” I imagined his list might include “break into the PD and copy police case notes” and “bring in all of Daisy's friends, acquaintances, and customers and line them up for
questioning.” Short of those tasks, I couldn't see what two regular citizens could accomplish. But I felt I owed Cliff a hearing, and when I was free enough to text back, I wrote
sure
.

I'd cleared the lobby line by ten minutes before noon, giving me a little time to look more carefully at the pile of questionable pieces that had been delivered this morning. Stuffing the post office boxes, my second duty after raising the flag every day, usually moved quickly. I inserted mail with correct addresses and tended to the problem pieces later, as time allowed. Generally, I could make up for mislabeled mail from memory. I knew that the Olsons rented box 457 and not 754, for example, and that the Carrolls lived in South Ashcot, not North Ashcot. But there were times when I had to do a little research before being able to take care of an incorrect label. I never liked writing
RETURN TO SENDER
unless I'd exhausted all other options.

This morning, I'd left a postcard from Quinn on top of the stack. I read the
wish you were here
message, then looked again at the beautiful photo. On the front was a shot of the Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester, a center of the fishing industry, north of Boston on Cape Ann. The vista made me wistful not only for my boyfriend, but for the days I'd spent walking the beaches along the Atlantic Ocean.

I tucked the card in my desk drawer and worked my way down the pile of misfits. A letter addressed to David Rafferty, a name I didn't recognize at first, had me stumped until I remembered that he was the Raleys' nephew from Chicago, spending the month of August with them and their tiny animals. I placed the envelope in their box.

Another anomaly was an envelope addressed to a former
box holder who'd moved. I checked my register, added the forwarding address, and dropped the item in the bag for pickup tomorrow. If only every problem could be solved so simply.

The last letter was addressed to “Postmaster.” I slit the plain white envelope open and read the handwritten note. I gulped and read it again, bringing on a shiver.

Do your job or go home.

My name wasn't on it, I reasoned, once my breath returned to normal. It wasn't a personal message. It could be meant for any postmaster, maybe Ben—though after a year on the job, I had to admit it probably wasn't for my predecessor, and the “go home” part was suspiciously pointed. The most positive spin I could put on it was that an ill-humored customer was unhappy with my job performance and unwilling to face me directly with his or her issue.

I tried to think of an altercation I'd had; nothing came to mind that would provoke this response. I'd opened the office a half hour late once this summer when a plumbing problem at home kept me longer than I'd expected. Ben had been away on vacation and I'd asked a neighbor on Main Street, two houses down, to post a sign on the post office door for me. She hadn't fastened it securely and the paper blew away. I'd returned to a small klatch of annoyed customers.

Was this note from one of them? Or from the woman whose five-hundred-dollar money order I wasn't able to cash until the end of the retail day? Or the man who was unhappy that I was out of medium-sized complimentary Priority Mail
boxes? I guess it had been a less than perfect summer at the North Ashcot Post Office after all.

I hoped one of those complainers was responsible for the note in my hand. Anything more sinister would be hard to grasp.

Letters of complaint were not something new to me. There was no limit to the number of people who might have a gripe. The grievance could be about poor service, too few hours of operation, a package that arrived damaged. I'd done my best to make up for any inadequacies, perceived or otherwise, over the course of my fifteen-year career with the postal service in various parts of Massachusetts. I remembered a time when I was working in Boston—a spider found its way to the top of my counter, prompting a woman to go screaming from the lobby and later to put her angry thoughts in writing. I wasn't proud of the good laugh Linda and I had at the woman's expense. Later, of course.

I inspected the current letter again, this time more calmly. It wasn't really ominous, I decided. Probably someone whose birthday card was lost in the mail for a while, through no fault of mine; or someone with a package I hadn't taped securely enough, definitely a fault of my own.

I put the letter in a “Miscellaneous” file, just in time to greet Cliff as he walked through the front doors carrying a leather-flap briefcase.

*   *   *

The chief of police was the only exception I made to the
NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS
rule posted behind the retail counter. Cliff didn't measure up to that standard, so I took
advantage of the adjoining community room where a group of volunteers was setting up for an evening meeting. With their permission, Cliff and I took our lunches to a table at the back, promising to leave it as clean as we'd found it.

I'd brought my usual peanut butter sandwich, but succumbed to an aromatic offering from Cliff, who'd stopped at a new seafood restaurant in South Ashcot. If he was trying to woo me with food, he was on the right track with an order of shrimp scampi.

Cliff showed no signs of being rested. Last evening's dark rings seemed more prominent, as did the lines around his mouth. I recognized the same polo shirt he'd worn yesterday and wondered if he'd even tried to rest. “Did you get any sleep?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I've got a lot to do. The police might release Daisy any minute and I'll be flying down to Miami where her parents are.”

I remembered that Daisy's parents had started out as “snowbirds,” the term we used to describe longtime residents of New England who spent the winter months in Florida as soon as they retired. Every year, with the first snow and the search for ice scrapers, I thought it was an idea worth considering, but never acted on it. Eventually, like other couples, Daisy's mom and dad sold their New Hampshire home and moved to Florida permanently.

Cliff pulled a folder from his briefcase. He had two copies of everything in the folder. One by one, he handed me sheets of paper, giving me a quick explanation for each. A list of friends (“Not suspects, but they may have some useful insights”). A list of customers who had a complaint in
the last six months (“Nothing big, but you never know”). Assorted lists of tasks, possible motives for wanting Daisy out of someone's life, and photos of the backyard where Daisy had met her killer.

The last items he pulled out of his briefcase were copies of pages that seemed to be from a ledger.

“Here's what I have so far on the financial side,” he said.

“I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to money matters,” I said, truthfully. I'd rejoiced when I learned that it was no longer necessary for me to slave over balancing my checkbook every month as long as I kept up online, and even the post office accounting chores were more and more centralized and streamlined every year, thanks to the Internet.

“I'm not that great, either,” Cliff said. “But we have to follow the money trail, as they say. Daisy handled the money herself, with Jules, our accountant, of course, but she talked about it a lot. In fact, she did her best to share the information with me. Now I wish I'd listened more.”

Cliff reached for his container of shrimp, but only to push it farther from his spread-out papers. I hadn't had much to eat since a quick lunch yesterday, but I hated to be the first to do something as mundane as eat during this highly emotional meeting. Part of me hoped my stomach growls would reach Cliff's ear, and maybe serve as a reminder to him.

No such luck. He stayed on track, sips from his bottle of water his only gesture to nutrition.

“I've asked Jules for whatever else he has, and he's going to help me interpret everything. I'm hoping you'll be at that meeting.”

“As I say—”

“We'll arrange it for your convenience. The more heads, the better, right?”

“Right.” Though the saying wasn't necessarily true if the extra one was as uninformed as mine.

“Jules said that this”—he tapped the ledger sheets—“was just the beginning. It'll take him a while to get everything together, which is understandable. I made sure he knows I'm not auditing his work. I wouldn't know where to begin even if I wanted to. I'm just looking for something that might lead somewhere. Who knows? Maybe we owe somebody and they . . .” He stopped, unable to complete the thought.

We left it vague enough that I felt I could be at the meeting if only for moral support.

“Let me know when you need me,” I said, hoping for so many reasons that the time would never come. First, because a swift solution of Daisy's case would be best all around. Preferably, today. Second, because I didn't want to annoy the chief of police by doing anything that resembled investigating. The third, fourth, and following reasons were the same as the second.

“Thanks,” said Cliff, who wasn't privy to my mental reservations. He extracted his copies of the lists of Daisy's friends and customers. “I thought we could start by splitting up these names and talking to as many of her friends and acquaintances as we can.”

“Don't you think the police are doing that already?”

Cliff grunted. “Maybe.”

I didn't argue but simply agreed to take
A
through
M
and put the folder aside for later viewing.

Not a good sign. As Daisy used to say, “It takes a long time to finish a quilt you're not working on.”

*   *   *

As soon as Cliff left, I put my container of shrimp scampi in the small fridge behind the post office boxes. Dinner, I hoped. For now, with no time even for my peanut butter sandwich, I unwrapped an energy bar and opened the doors for the retail afternoon.

The afternoon line was steady; no crowds, but I didn't have much downtime, either. Now and then I glanced at the folder on my desk and thought about what it would mean for me to act on its contents. I took a minute to reach over and place the manila folder in a drawer, out of sight. Although it was labeled only
CASSIE
, in Cliff's careful printing, I imagined if Sunni dropped by she'd be able to see through the cardstock to the notes on Daisy's murder, and I guessed that I was heading for an obstruction of justice charge. Or if Ben, my bored mentor and predecessor, dropped by, he might feel free to open it. Ben was having a hard time with retirement and was known to poke around and offer his assistance at random, but he'd never open my desk.

Midway through the afternoon, I noticed Molly Boyd in the lobby, wrestling with a couple of packages. She'd shed her crutches and was down to using a cane, a flashy pink paisley one. I heard an interchange between her and the young woman behind her in a UMass sweatshirt. I couldn't help eavesdropping while I waited for my current customer to complete a customs form for international shipping.

“I'm glad to see you're walking better,” said the woman, whom I recognized as a barista from Mahican's café.

“Yes, thanks,” Molly responded.

The barista pointed to Molly's bandaged ankle. “How did you do it?”

“In the storm last Monday. My cat got out and I was chasing her and tripped over the little wall around my garden.” Molly gave a weak smile and shrugged. “Dumb accident.”

“Aren't they all?” the barista asked.