Death and Honesty (13 page)

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Authors: Cynthia Riggs

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Cozy

BOOK: Death and Honesty
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Casey marched out of the kitchen and shut the door firmly behind her. Victoria heard her footsteps echo across the bricks of the entry floor, clump down the stone steps, and fade away in the new grass.
She waited for the chief to disappear down the driveway, safely out of sight, before she pushed open the woodshed door. Darcy was crouched behind it, and she almost knocked him over.
She held her hand out to steady him. “They’ve gone.”
Darcy got up slowly, rubbing the calves of his legs. “Cramps,” he explained when Victoria looked concerned. “Interesting.” He stretched his arms over his head and bent from side to side. “Very interesting.”
Victoria still smarted over Casey’s scolding. “I don’t spread rumors.”
“No, of course you don’t.” Darcy sat at the table and continued to rub his legs.
Victoria cleared away the empty coffee cups, took them into the kitchen, and set them on the counter. “Did you learn anything?” she asked when she was seated again.
“I learned that Chief Casey O’Neill is super sensitive about the opinions of ‘the guys.’”
Victoria nodded. “I apparently ruffled her feathers by not informing her first.”
“I also learned that the cops suspect me of something, but they’re not sure what.” Darcy smiled. “And they’re not one bit comfortable with the idea of confronting three little old ladies. Entrenched, respectable, and fragile little old ladies.”
“Those three assessors are no more fragile than I am,” said Victoria, her face set in disapproval. “Stereotyping the elderly,
as usual.” She lifted her beaky nose. “Those little old ladies are fully aware of their power. No one dares challenge them.”
“Don’t look at me that way, Victoria. I’m on your side.” Darcy checked his watch. “They’ve probably finished with the oil change by now. I’ve got to get the limo back to Delilah’s.”
Darcy started to get up, and Victoria suddenly remembered what she’d meant to tell him. “There was an interesting development last evening. We surprised Oliver watching a pornographic movie on his computer.”
Darcy sat back with a smirk. “We, Mrs. Trumbull?”
“Howland and I. The actress was Delilah.”
“No way!”
“Howland is at Town Hall now, copying the video.”
Darcy laughed. “The Reverend True’s missus. That explains Oliver’s blackmail plan.”
“If I were she, I would not care to have that movie publicized.”
Darcy looked at his watch again. “I can stay for a few minutes more.” He stood up. “I’ve got to work this cramp out of my leg.”
“Dehydration,” said Victoria. “Drink some water.”
“Can’t hurt.” Darcy went into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of water. “One for you, Mrs. Trumbull.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to look into why the pilot, Cappy Jessup, the guy I knew as Frank Morris, was the one to fly Henry to the Island,” said Darcy, sitting down again. “Henry didn’t seem to know him, at least not well. Was he checking up on Henry? Or Delilah? Or me? Who sent him, the church? If not the church, who? I’ve got to find answers to those questions.” He drank his water. “And there’s another unknown. What do you know about Oliver Ashpine?”
“Unsavory, rude, and officious.”
Darcy held his hands up as if to ward her off. “Don’t hold back on my account.”
Victoria frowned, thinking about Oliver with his painted-on hair and arrogance, blatantly stealing tax money. “It seems likely, to me, that Oliver killed Tillie.”
“To get her job? It’s not as though the scam was paying off hundreds of thousands. At most, we’re talking about a few thousand, if that. Hardly motive for murder. How long had Tillie been the assessors’ clerk?”
“About eight years,” said Victoria. “Not more. She was only in her mid- to late twenties, I would guess.”
“Attractive?”
“Quite pretty.” Victoria thought for a moment. “Long blond hair, brown eyes, a nice trim figure.”
“Would she have known about the assessors’ scheme?”
“Someone besides the assessors had to be in on it, and their clerk and tax collector is the most likely one.”
Darcy raised his eyebrows. “Why tax collector?”
“The town has a system of checks and balances to prevent this very kind of scheme from happening. Separate jobs held by different people.” Victoria sipped her water. “But Tillie held the two critical positions—tax collector and assessors’ clerk.” She thought a moment. “Her brother Lambert has worked for the town for years. He’s likely to know about the scheme, too.”
“The tax collector is an elected position, right?”
“Yes. Tillie was up for reelection every three years. She ran unopposed each time. The assessors made sure of that.”
“When she didn’t show up for work, didn’t anyone report her missing? She’d been dead for five months.”
“She was an independent young woman.” Victoria paused. “Everyone assumed she’d run off with Fred Smith, a man she’d been seeing for several months. His wife reported him missing around the same time.”
“Has Smith shown up?”
“I haven’t heard,” said Victoria.
“I’ll check out Fred Smith.” Darcy pulled a small notebook out of his shirt pocket and wrote in it. “What about Lambert Willoughby?” Darcy continued to write. “Tillie’s brother.”
“Lucy Pease, the woman who was killed, was Lambert Willoughby’s mother-in-law,” said Victoria.
“Odd, his sister and his mother-in-law both killed. Did Willoughby and his mother-in-law get along?”
“As well as could be expected,” said Victoria. “They were civil to one another. Tillie, of course, was no relation to Lucy Pease. The two were what we Vineyarders call ‘connections.’”
Darcy stood up again, still rubbing his calf. “Did Tillie have any other family?”
“Only Lambert, his wife, and their three children, as far as I know. Is the water helping with the cramp?”
“Seems to be.” He went into the kitchen and returned with another glassful. “Yet no one wondered about not hearing from Tillie for five months? They didn’t report her missing?”
“They may have wondered, but apparently did nothing to try to locate her.”
Darcy shook his head as though he couldn’t understand such a family.
Victoria smiled. “What about you, Darcy-Emery-Meyer? Does your family know where you are now and where you’ve been for the past five months—or more?”
“Touché, Mrs. Trumbull. So Tillie disappears,” he continued. “Oliver shows up and the assessors hire him. Where did he come from?”
“He’d had various jobs here on the Vineyard, mostly in the Oak Bluffs town government. Nothing significant. He seemed qualified enough. No one else applied for the position, and based on the assessors’ recommendation, he was hired.”
“Sounds as though he took a drop in pay.”
“I suspect the assessors let him know he’d be supplementing his pay significantly”
Darcy went back to his notes. “Tillie and her brother Lambert both worked in Town Hall?”
Victoria nodded.
“Tillie disappears, no one makes any inquiries, Oliver applies for her job and is hired. Since tax collector is an elected position, how did Oliver end up with that job, too? Just like Tillie?”
“On the assessors’ recommendation the selectmen appointed him to fill Tillie’s unexpired term. He’s up for election this month.”
“Then what?”
“He’s likely to win. He’s running unopposed.”
“A fine kettle of fish,” said Darcy, going back to his notes. “What’s next in our chronology?”
“Oliver took over Tillie’s job as tax collector. The tax bills went out this week. Delilah complained about the high assessment on her property, and Oliver threatened to blackmail her.” Victoria paused and smiled faintly. “You might want to see the film he found to blackmail her with. Howland can make a copy for you, if you’d like.”
“No, thanks just the same.”
“When Delilah met Henry, she thought he was the head of the church and wealthy beyond her fondest dream, but it turned out he’s on a clergyman’s salary. He was after her money, not the other way around.”
“Nice people,” said Darcy. “So she intends to divorce Henry. What does he have to say about that?”
“She hasn’t told him, although I’m sure he suspects. According to Massachusetts law, if they divorce, he gets half of all she owns. Establishing her farm will cut the assessed value significantly.”
Darcy laughed. “Fainting goats and dyed chicks.”
“She’s not stupid,” said Victoria. “And she has a certain sense of style. She’s learned that tractors are available in several colors.”
“A pink tractor,” Darcy said thoughtfully, and went back to his notes. “Would Delilah have known Tillie?”
“Possibly. Delilah’s been here for several years. But I doubt if she ever went into Town Hall before she confronted Oliver a few days ago.”
“Delilah may have known Frank Morris. Her show is filmed in West Virginia, and he may have flown her there.”
“A number of loose ends to tie up,” said Victoria. “We need to get started.”
For several months, Jordan Rivers had been awakened long before dawn by Chickee, the Willoughbys’ rooster. Chickee was housed in a ramshackle pen on the far edge of the Willoughby property, immediately across the narrow dirt road from Jordan’s own property and close to his house. The rooster would burst into sudden loud voice at any time of day or night.
Jordan called on Victoria Trumbull, who was weeding the new plants he’d given her.
“I told you, honesty is invasive,” Jordan said. “You may be sorry.”
“I hope so,” said Victoria, with a smile. “We can use more of it.”
“I admired a stand of honesty in the Willoughbys’ yard and took a handful of seeds,” Jordan continued. “Now I can’t get rid of the stuff. If you think it will help, I’ll scatter seeds around Town Hall.”
He crouched down beside her, pulled a few weeds and tossed them off to one side.
“Let me show you what a black-eyed Susan seedling looks like,” said Victoria diplomatically, retrieving the seedling from Jordan’s weed pile.
“Sorry, Victoria. I’m going crazy with that rooster.”
“I suppose he wakes you early, greeting the dawn?”
“Dawn!” said Jordan. “I wish it were only at dawn. He kept me up all night last night, crowing. He’s not a normal rooster. Everything and anything sets him off. Car lights. A slammed door. An inquisitive skunk. Their kids.” Jordan made a wry face. “His crowing starts up Ashpine’s mutt, who’s part wolf.”
“Wolf?”
“A Jack Russell, actually”
“Mr. Willoughby seems like a reasonable man.” Victoria
pointed with her gardening tool. “That’s a tiger lily seedling, not a weed. Why not suggest that he move Chickee’s pen to the other side of their property?”
“I did. Want me to replant it?”
“Don’t pull them up if you can avoid it, but there are plenty. No great loss. What did Mr. Willoughby say?”
“He demurred. Said there’d always been a chicken coop there, even before I built my house.”
“Would he be willing to get rid of Chickee?”
“I suggested that, too, and the youngest, the three-year-old, started to cry.” Jordan stood up and crossed to the other side of the border and began to yank weeds. “Making Sweetie Pie cry has ensured the permanent enmity of the entire family.”
“What about talking to the animal control officer?”
“I did. I filed a complaint, but Joanie said this is an agricultural town, and chickens are agricultural.”
Victoria was silent, thinking.
Jordan said, “You know that poem of yours, where you were in the city one time and imagined that the sound of traffic was the sound of surf on the south shore?”
Victoria nodded.
“I’ve tried imagining that Chickee’s voice is no different from the sound of the city, sirens in the night, horns honking, brakes screeching, kids screaming, gunshots, that sort of thing. It’s not the same. I bought a white noise machine, but it can’t compete with Chickee.” He held up a plant. “Ragweed?”
“Chrysanthemum. Why not limit yourself to grass.”
He nodded. “I tried earplugs, but they hurt my ears. I tried shutting the windows at night, but that makes it too stuffy to sleep.” He looked up at Victoria, who was patting soil around a plant she’d rescued from his weed pile. “Besides, the glass rattles when Chickee crows and amplifies the sound. I’m going mad, Victoria!”
How ironic, Victoria thought. A rooster was all it took to upset Jordan, when in real life, when not on spring vacation, he dealt equably with school life in the city despite knives, guns, chewing gum, and sass.
“I’ve thought about wringing Chickee’s neck, poisoning him,
or shooting him,” said Jordan. “I’d have to get an air gun, of course.”
“I’m surprised that he hasn’t been attacked by skunks or hawks before now.”
Jordan brightened. “Can they get in the chicken coop?”
“I should think so, depending on how well built the coop is, of course.”
“Rickety,” said Jordan, thoughtfully.
“Try overfeeding him,” said Victoria. “That’s humane.”
Jordan smiled faintly.
“Perhaps you could convince Mr. Willoughby to sell Chickee to Delilah Sampson. She’s planning to start a chicken farm.”
“The woman who bought the old Hammond place?”
“She lives at least three miles from you.”
Jordan stood up and brushed off his hands. “You’ve given me a great idea, Mrs. Trumbull. Thanks.”
Victoria watched him fasten on his helmet, get on his recumbent bicycle, and peddle off, wondering what it was she’d set in motion.
 
Jordan planned his rooster-napping with care. If he were to approach the pen, Chickee would crow and continue to crow until silenced. He would have to lure the Willoughbys—husband, wife, and three small children—away for an hour or so.
Jordan had sent the family, anonymously, a movie pass good for this Saturday’s matinee.
Saturday was a gorgeous day when Jordan would ordinarily have ridden his recumbent bike into the State Forest on the bicycle trail. Instead, he waited at home. The matinee was at two o’clock. At one-thirty, Mrs. W. and the two older children went out through their front door, the door that always set the rooster off. The door slammed. Chickee crowed. Ashpine’s Jack Russell barked.
Jordan waited for Mr. Willoughby and the youngest. But the wife buckled the two kids into their seats in the SUV, got into the driver’s seat, and took off.
What about Mr. W. and Sweetie Pie?
Jordan took a couple of cold bottles of Sam Adams out of his refrigerator, slipped out his side door, and went over to the Willoughbys.
He could see Mr. W. through the glass panes in the door, sitting in his Barcalounger watching TV along with the youngest child, who had taken all the clothes off her doll and was marching the naked doll along a line of wooden blocks.
Jordan knocked. Mr. Willoughby looked up, heaved himself out of the Barcalounger, and opened the door.
“Chickee bothering you again?” he asked, lifting up his T-shirt and scratching his exposed belly.
“I thought you might like a cold beer,” said Jordan, holding the two bottles out. “Peace offering.”
Willoughby examined them. “Don’t much like Sam Adams. My beer’s Bud.”
Jordan looked around. “Where’s the wife and kids?”
“The movies.” Mr. Willoughby pulled his shirt down and yawned. “Guess I’ll try one of the Sam Adams after all.” He held out a hand and Jordan passed over a cold bottle.
Jordan shifted from one foot to the other, waiting to be asked to have a seat. “Movies?”
“Someone sent a movie pass.”
Jordan held out a bottle opener.
“Don’t need it.” Mr. Willoughby twisted off the bottle cap and settled back in his Barcalounger.
Jordan seated himself on an overstuffed ottoman and used the opener on his own beer. “Didn’t you want to go?”
“Hate the movies,” said Mr. Willoughby. “Saturday is nothing but damned kid stuff.” He gestured at his daughter, who was staring at Jordan, her thumb in her mouth, the naked doll held by one foot. “Anyhow, Sweetie Pie here’s coming down with something. Got the sniffles.”
Jordan, careful about his own health, wheeled the ottoman backwards, away from the child.
“What’s on your mind?” Mr. Willoughby tipped his bottle up and poured a portion of the contents down his throat. He examined the bottle. “Bud’s better.”
“Just wanted to be neighborly,” said Jordan politely. “Mend fences, so to speak.”
“Yeah? Mend fences by siccing a goddamned lawyer on me. Thanks a lot, pal.”
“That seemed the way to keep things from getting personal,” said Jordan. “Let the lawyers work it out.”
“Nothing to work out. My kids have a pet chicken. West Tisbury’s agricultural. Chickens are agriculture. What’s your beef? Don’t like the country? Move back to the goddamned city. We was here first, asshole.”
Jordan rose to his feet with dignity, leaving his untouched beer behind. He pushed his glasses, which had slipped partway down his nose, back into place with his third finger, and walked out of the Willoughbys’ house.
He heard Mr. Willoughby’s laugh and the word “asshole” repeated as he shut the door carefully behind him.
Back in his own house, Jordan pondered over a new strategy. If Chickee simply went missing, Willoughby would assume that he, Jordan, was responsible, which would, in truth, be the case.
An airplane flew overhead. Chickee crowed.
Willoughby would retaliate in some gross way.
But suppose some predator were to break into Chickee’s pen and do away with him, the way Victoria Trumbull had suggested, leaving a few feathers and a trace of blood. Jordan smiled for the first time in hours. Skunks, raccoons, and hawks. The Island had plenty of those and they loved fresh chicken. Since Jordan didn’t actually wish to have Chickee killed, he would have to extract Chickee from the coop, then wreck it as though a hawk or skunk had broken into it.
 
The following morning, Sunday, the Willoughbys left for church, carrying snot-nosed Sweetie Pie wrapped up in a pink bunnyprinted blanket. The door of their SUV slammed shut. Chickee crowed.
Jordan smiled.
He pulled on his deerskin gardening gloves and retrieved the basket of tools he’d prepared the night before after talking with Victoria. Knowing her sense of honor, he’d neglected to tell her his plans. He had shown interest, subtly, he thought, when she told him about the signs of predation.
He’d bought an oven roaster chicken and taken out of the body cavity the paper packet containing neck, liver, and gizzards.
A car went by on the main road. Chickee sent up a cry. Jordan watched the driveway he shared with the Willoughbys until he was sure they were gone, then tiptoed through the scrub oak and across the lane that separated their houses. With a claw gardening tool he would make this seem like the work of a hawk’s talons.
Chickee’s pen was about the size of a coffee table, two feet by three feet and about two feet high. He pried loose the wire over the top of the pen. Chickee strutted back and forth, his comb bright red and standing up straight, his head thrown back, in deafening full cry.
Ashpine’s Jack Russell took up the cry, and the dog’s frenetic barking seemed to be coming closer.
Jordan scattered a few feathers he’d taken from his pillow, and emptied the packet of liver and gizzards into the pen. Chickee stopped crowing long enough to peck at the bloody mess, and Jordan seized him by his feet. Chickee, himself, dropped a couple of feathers in the skirmish, and Jordan thrust the rooster, head first, into a burlap grain bag he’d brought with him for the purpose. As he retreated to his car, an energy-efficient hybrid, he brushed out his footsteps with a branch he’d snapped off an oak tree.
Before he got into his car, he was aware that Bertie had stopped yapping. The dog was trotting toward the wrecked coop. Ashpine didn’t usually let Bertie roam free. There was, after all, a leash law in West Tisbury, and Ashpine seemed obsessive about obeying the law.
Jordan kept an eye on Bertie while he tied the mouth of the grain bag with twine and placed it carefully on the backseat of his car. The dog stopped near the wreckage. His stumpy tail wagged and his tongue hung out in a sort of smile. Jordan wondered briefly if he should take Bertie back to Ashpine’s house, but decided he’d better deal with Chickee first.
The bag writhed, swelled, subsided, and emitted muffled squawks. He slammed the car door shut, got into the driver’s seat, put the car into gear and drove down Old County Road to State Road, turned left, and made his way to Delilah Sampson’s enclave.

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