Death in a Turkey Town: A Chloe Boston Mystery (3 page)

“You’re not coming?” He was relieved.

“No. I’ve got to get back to work.” Gordon’s brow beetled as he belatedly considered his own truancy. I said, “If anyone notices just tell them you took an early lunch when you heard your fiancée was hurt. The Chief will understand—someone is manning the desk, right?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Wicks is there.”

That wasn’t so great. Petunia Wicks was a sweet woman but she had never really gotten the hang of our phone system. I crossed my fingers that we had no emergencies that afternoon. We could have riots and looting inside the station before Mrs. Wicks managed to successfully answer a call.

“Well, don’t be long anyway. And don’t worry—Aunt Dorothy and Mom are with Althea. She’ll be fine.”

“Maybe I should call my mother,” he said tentatively.

“Why don’t you wait until you have definite news?” And until I was long gone. “You know Althea wouldn’t want a big fuss made.”

That was a total lie. Althea would want a giant fuss made over her. But not by Gordon’s mother who was likely to arrive with her gold roses and unwanted wedding plans.

“That’s a good idea. Althea wouldn’t want to scare Mom. She’s very sensitive,” he said, relieved to have an excuse to put off the phone call. Poor Gordon. Neither Althea nor his mom were as delicate as he believed.

I patted him on the arm, feeling empathy for his approaching disillusionment.

“Don’t worry. Althea was able to phone for help. She didn’t hit her head, so there is no need to worry about anything except her ankle.” And Althea’s brain damage had been with her since birth. True, she would be cranky until completely healed, but it was best that Gordon know how peevish she could be before the knot was tied. As Gordon already knew, there isn’t an easy out for buyer’s remorse when you’re married. “But you need to warn Althea that your ex is in town. Maybe not this minute since the moms are there and you may want to be private when you tell her, but soon. You don’t want her getting blind-sided with this news and you know how some people gossip.”

People like the lardhead actually and there were a whole lot of people who would be happy to pay him back. I left Gordon gulping like a stranded fish and hurried out of the gloomy hospital and back to my cart where Blue was waiting.

Chapter 3

I have one of my grandmother’s special tablecloths. Mom has always been afraid to use it. For her, tablecloths should either be white damask or else vinyl with childish figures you take on picnics.  This cloth is linen, hand printed, made in Brazil. The colors are a rich wine and eggplant—or aubergine, to those who mistakenly think the textile was made in France. It has gold medallions and assorted gourds around the border and again in the center of the cloth. It is rather like the tablecloths I’ve seen downtown at the kitchen shop that are from Provence. Except the colors are more intense.

I am not a shopper, but a year ago I had stopped by an estate sale and fallen in love with a set of dishes. I had been hiding them since that impulsive purchase. They were fire engine red and square. Mom would hate them, but I was going to use them for Thanksgiving along with Grandma’s tablecloth since for once I was having enough guests to justify putting a leaf in the table and that would lift the cloth off of the floor where it would puddle in a convenient cat size bed if the table was not extended. I had also seen a wonderful arrangement made out of fall leaves and pepper berries instead of flowers in a magazine. The fall leaves were getting scarce thanks to a series of storms, but I still had some creeper on my fence and there were sprigs of fallen pepper berries everywhere. Mrs. Everett had some neat twisted twigs in her yard—Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick, she called it. I was sure she would let me have some.

Of course, I would have to polish the silver. Mom had given me all of Grandma’s sterling because it tarnishes instantly and she hates polishing it. So do I, which was why it sat in the back of the linen closet, looking gloomy most of the time. But not this year—I was going all out. Nothing but the best for Alex. Silver polish went on my list of things to purchase.

Dazed at my unaccustomed fit of domestic planning, I decided to retire to bed and meditate on possible pies to bake. The Food Network had shown me several exotic ones. Would my guests actually eat grape or pecan-pear pie?

I was lying under my blankets, surrounded by warm furry bodies and enjoying the soft patter of the rain at the window when the peace was disturbed by a loud crack. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. 11:13. More ‘backfires’ and close by.

Blue whined and I frowned. Had another turkey just gone to the great prairie in the sky? If so, he was traveling alone and unavenged. It was cold and wet out there and I wasn’t going outside again just to give a neighbor another lecture about discharging firearms within the town limits.

I turned off the light.

*  *  *

The call came at six the next morning. Calls before dawn are never good news and dread had me fully awake when I picked up the phone. Awake but not polite. I’ve never had the knack of waking up cheerful.

“What?” I slurred.

“Boston?” It was the Chief. Since he is about the only person who calls me before dawn, he is used to my bad phone manners. “Get down to Courthouse Park. There’s been another murder.”

Another murder. We hadn’t had a homicide in a decade and now our little town had had two in less than a month.

“On my way.” And I was. The call was as effective as a slap in the face and I was filled with foreboding. I had a very bad feeling I knew who the corpse would be.

Coffey Road is a melancholy street even in daylight. The old trees have passed from pleasantly sheltering and moved to forbidding. The sunlight didn’t dapple here even on the brightest summer day, and even in winter with the limbs bare, it remained a dark corridor for the north wind to travel, though even its voice was muffled by the ancient arbors and tall, dull-colored houses that seemed aloof from the human activity below. People didn’t so much live in these houses as they were swallowed by them. And, I couldn’t quite forget the ghost my Cousin Todd insisted haunted one of the houses there. This was the same Todd who terrified me with tales of alligators under the bed and also with stories about a monster that crept through the stacks at the library and ate children who wandered too far from the librarian’s desk. I hated Cousin Todd. I hated traveling that street too in the heartless hour before sunrise.

Or maybe I just didn’t like parking near the cemetery and the old Burns’ mansion when it was dark since I had met a real monster there. But they were both near Courthouse Park where the pageant organizers had planned their Thanksgiving spectacle and where someone had gotten themselves murdered, so I forced myself to act bravely and like I didn’t feel the physical and spiritual cold all around me. Blue’s presence helped.

I could see by the klieg lights that had been set up that the victim was a red haired female. It spilled around her making it seem her head had exploded. I only knew one person with hair that unnatural color, Dale Gordon’s ex-wife. My heart sank though I had been expecting to see her.

Poor, silly woman
, I thought when I reached her. She’s had her heart broken again.
This time with a bullet
.

“Thoughts, Boston,” the Chief asked softly. I was not allowed to get too close while Bryce processed the crime scenes since I am not an official detective. But the Chief had become a convert last Halloween and was now a true believer in my strange abilities and wanted me to have a first look. The Chief wasn’t the only curious one though, and a couple other officers, Eddie Rounds and Keith Regan, had sidled closer to hear what I might say. They saw me as a freak, but a useful one to be temporarily tolerated.

“Small caliber bullet—maybe a twenty-two,” I said. “She was shot in the chest at close range, but not much bleeding, so death was instantaneous. Her fingernails are intact, so she didn’t have a chance to fight her attacker and maybe mark him. Or her,” I added conscientiously. “Have you told Dale yet?”

“Dale Gordon? No, why would I?” That was a fair question. Gordon was a lousy policeman and the Chief used him only as a last resort.

“Because this is his ex-wife. Her name is Sylvia. She went by Silly.”

The Chief’s jaw hung down. This time I had really impressed him. I decided not to explain my insight at that moment, though I would probably have to tell him about Althea and the vicious prank with the WD-40 because I had a strong hunch they were connected. But I saw no need to mention this in front of Eddie Rounds who is a friend of Dale Gordon’s and a terrible gossip. I reported the messy stuff only to the Chief and my incidental findings were kept off the record.

I thought back to the shot I had heard last night and wanted to kick myself. People had been shooting at turkeys all week, but not late at night when it was cold and raining. Who would be out hunting up a free dinner at that hour?

“She died at eleven-thirteen,” I said. The next part was hard to admit. “I heard the shot. And I ignored it. I thought it was—”

“Someone shooting at the turkeys,” the Chief finished sympathetically. “I heard it too and didn’t give it a thought.”

Eddie also nodded. “I bet a lot of us heard it. Sound carries real good up the canyon.”

I kicked myself once more and then carried on calmly. “She was staying at the Morningside Inn. She had one of their gift certificates in her car—a red Corvette.” I looked around the park and saw it parked illegally by the oleander hedge near the streetlight and pointed. “That’s her car. So, she wasn’t just out for a casual walk in the rain last night. That probably means she was lured here. Check the car for a note, but I’m betting it was a phone call either to her cell or to the Inn. Probably from the pay phone over there.” I jerked my head at the last pay phone in town which was snuggled up next to the Church of Christian Science.

Bryce had joined the circle around me. I didn’t mind. He was a friend of my father’s and already knew what I could do. He also knew when to keep his mouth shut. He was one of the few officers that the Chief trusted.

“I’ll check it out right away,” he said to the Chief. “I need to go over the car too.”

“Check the garbage can first.” I gestured at the receptacle by the bench.

The Chief nodded at Bryce who carefully lifted the wooden lid with a gloved hand, not that it was likely that the old splintering wood had taken any fingerprints. Trash cans in the park were disguised as mini outhouses. Why this was considered aesthetically better than a regular trash can I don’t know, but it was what the town council had decided.

For bad moment I thought we had another body on our hands but a second glance proved the unnerving sight to be a sunhat, wig and sunglasses. Bryce began bagging the items. I resisted the urge to tell him to check the wig for hair fibers. The lab would do that of course.

“The timing sucks,” Bryce muttered. “And I’m going to miss breakfast.”

Yes, it sucked. Another guest of the Morningside Inn murdered. Did guide books have a rating for that? It was a cinch that the chamber of commerce would never mention it, but still word would probably get around. That wasn’t good. Hope Falls relied on tourism and we were approaching one of our biggest weekends. What if tourists took fright and canceled?

The floppy hat being crammed in a bag kick-started my brain and I remembered something else.

“Someone may have been following her. Run the plates on a funny green car, some kind of hybrid, I think.” I recalled the license plate. “GREEN14. It may be a rental. The woman—I think it was a woman— driving it had on a big hat and sunglasses, so I couldn’t see her clearly. Check the Motor Court Inn just in case she’s still in town.”

I drove by the Morningside Inn on my route and hadn’t seen the strange green car there. We have a couple bed and breakfast places, but they don’t advertise and are booked months in advance. If someone wanted a place to stay with short notice, the Motor Court was where they headed.

Bryce nodded some more. He knew my route and therefore my thinking.

“It’s too early to know for certain, but the obvious people to question are the ones who knew her. That would be Gordon and his mother,” I said ever so reluctantly. And my cousin. Maybe. I didn’t know that Silly and Althea had met, but suspected they might have. If Silly could find me by asking locals, she could also find Althea. Mom’s eight p.m. report said my cousin’s ankle was sore from her fall, but that she could drive. And my Aunt Dorothy had a twenty-two rifle. Of course, so did practically everyone in town. It was the preferred gift for many Sweet Sixteens (boys got something more powerful with a scope for hunting, and some of both also got handguns for graduation). I’d look at my aunt’s rifle. If it wasn’t covered in dust and obviously unused I would have to take it in for a ballistics check.

Aunt Dorothy was going to love that. And Mom would be less than thrilled to know I was involved—however tangentially—in another murder investigation. Especially one that concerned the family. I couldn’t really blame her for being upset. The last case had almost gotten me killed.

“I’m going to talk to some people,” I said vaguely, trying to ignore the dread that was forming at the edges of my brain. “Like my dad,” I added, looking at the Chief. Randy just nodded. The rest of the town might still be angry about the change in leadership, but the Chief and my dad got along fine since they both had the town’s welfare at heart.

“That’s good.”

“Any media here yet?” I asked the sky as the sun began to muscle its way past the clouds that packed the horizon. The rain had taken a break but it would return. It always did that time of year.

“No, but local crews are coming for the pageant on Wednesday night. It would be nice to have something solid by then just in case they ask about this,” the Chief said neutrally. “Someone is bound to leak the story to them.”

I looked at Eddie and snorted. Usually I am more polite but I hadn’t had my coffee.