Decorated to Death (4 page)

A cool front had crept down from the north the previous night, bringing with it a small measure of relief from the normally hot, humid summer weather. With an expected high temperature of only seventy-five degrees, a northern breeze, and partially cloudy skies, it was a suitable day to invite Pesty along for the ride.

Spurred on by the prospect of being with Mary, who is known to keep a supply of cookies in her purse, and with hopes of being the recipient of a Farmer John’s doggy bag, the short-legged Kees made the leap from driveway to van in a single bound. Exhausted by the Superman-like feat, Pesty settled down for a morning nap.

Ever the optimist, Mary put Herbie Waddlemeyer in charge of England’s Fine Furniture and was waiting for me at the store’s delivery entrance. In spite of making a few wrong turns (unlike Charlie, I don’t have a compass in my nose or in my vehicle) Mary and I were soon truckin’ on down Old Railway Road.

While I concentrated on avoiding an endless series of potholes, Mary drank in the scenery, which consisted of not much more than some tumbledown fences, fallow fields, groves of leafy trees, and large patches of prairie grass.

“You know something, Gin,” Mary remarked as I maneuvered the van around a particularly nasty pothole, “I can’t remember the last time I was on this road. Can you?”

“Yeah, but it was years ago when JR attended summer camp. They had a field trip out to the old railroad station and JR signed up for it. Had I known Herbie Waddlemeyer would be driving the bus, I never would have volunteered to go along.”

“Why on earth not? The man’s an excellent driver,” said Mary, coming to her employee’s defense. “He’s never had an accident or even a ticket. Honestly, Gin, sometimes you’re so judgmental.”

“Well, you would be, too, if you had to spend two hours on a hot bus with no one to talk to except Herbie,” I said, steering the van around the rotting remains of unrecognizable roadkill. “I missed the entire tour thanks to him and his big, fat head.”

“What in the world does the size of Herbie’s head have to do with your missing the tour and spending two hours on the bus?” asked the bewildered Mary.

“Because, my dear Watson, that’s how long it took me to free Herbie’s oversized noggin from the clutches of the automatic door. At the time, I thought it was a freak accident,” I added before changing the subject. “Keep an eye out for some sign of civilization like a mailbox or a driveway. Somebody, either Dona Deville, or maybe it was her personal assistant, said the place faces Old Railway Road. Supposedly, it’s not far from the old railroad station and the interstate.”

“I don’t see anything like that, but I just saw a sign for getting on the interstate so we must be pretty close,” said Mary before shouting, “Oh my stars, there it is! There’s the cottage!”

Thanking God for Mary’s keen eyesight and the van’s new set of brakes, I safely negotiated a quick turn onto the narrow gravel driveway that circled the property. After bringing the van to a halt in front of the cottage, I stepped out and looked around. There was something about the place that seemed vaguely familiar. I was baffled until I spotted the school bell and pole that stood just off to the right of the porch.

Surrounded on three sides by a thicket of mature trees and hidden somewhere beneath the peeling and faded red exterior with its mustard-colored trim was the building’s original footprint. Once a humble center of learning, the little schoolhouse had since been transformed into a two-storied cottage. The architectural style was classic Stick.

The Stick style evolved from Carpenter Gothic, an offshoot of Victorian architecture popular in the mid-to late-nineteenth century. Purely American, Stick style is distinctive for its use of board-and-batten vertical siding minus the fussiness of classic and romantic ornamentation generally found in Victorian and Carpenter architecture.

The faded, reddish-brown front door had an overhead transom window of clear glass. Around the door someone had painted a border of hearts and flowers in the same mustard color that trimmed the windows, front porch, railings, and banisters. The porch ran the width of the cottage and like the cottage, it had a shake roof. A porch swing of faded red was to the left of the front door at a right angle to the door and a trio of faded, mustard-yellow-trimmed windows. The cottage sat on a foundation of fieldstone.

One look at the cottage’s exterior and I immediately rid my mind of the blue, green, and gray palette along with the New England decor that I’d been considering. Instead, I visualized doing the cottage inside and out in an array of earth tones. I would paint the exterior in a medium shade of brown and in keeping with the earth-tone palette, all trim on the cottage would be done in a forest green. Wooden shutters of forest green would flank the windows and like the trim around the chocolate-colored front door, they would be decorated with hand-painted stenciled hearts and flowers in a pale yellow-green.

The existing porch swing, which sat at a right angle to the front door, would be given a fresh coat of forest green paint. A pair of green ladder-back rockers with thick cushions and a small wooden barrel with a checkerboard top would make the porch an inviting space to visit with friends or a place to kick back and relax.

The new palette would add warmth to a decor of welcoming simplicity and complement the woodland setting. It would also capture the spirit of individualism, a characteristic of American country charm.

I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve whose head is filled with wonderful visions of what was to come. Baskets of sunflowers, hand-hooked rugs, quilts, trestle tables, ladder-back chairs, hurricane lamps, framed samplers, green glass-ware, mason jars, stenciled borders, and open cabinetry danced in my head.

With a renewed sense of purpose and direction, I was delighted to discover that now I was actually looking forward to my meeting with Dona Deville.

Mary emerged from the van and walked over to where I was standing. “Hey, I think I know this place. This used to be the one-room schoolhouse that Great-Uncle Fortesque Hastings and his twin brother, Forsyth, attended as children. I’ve even got an old photo of the two of them ringing that bell. With the outside being so changed, I’m dying to see the inside, aren’t you, Gin?”

“Sure, but I’ll bet you an extra-large mocha latte from the Koffee Kabin that the place is locked up tighter than an all-night liquor store safe.” The Koffee Kabin, Seville’s answer to Starbucks, brews a wickedly delicious mocha latte.

“You’re on,” Mary said, flashing a dimpled, mischievous smile. “Last one on the porch is a rotten egg.”

Moving faster than either one of us thought possible, the race to the porch ended in a dead heat. When I stopped to catch my breath, Mary reached for the doorknob and gave it a twist. To my surprise, the door was unlocked.

“I do believe that a certain somebody owes me a mocha latte. Extra large, if I’m not mistaken,” said Mary, crossing the threshold and stepping into the foyer.

Being a few steps behind, I was unable to prevent what happened next. First, Mary let loose with a bloodcurdling scream. Then she fainted. My faithful friend, the ingenuous Mary, had literally stumbled upon the dead body of a woman.

Faced with the prospect of moving Mary without disturbing the body, I looked around, hoping to find a nearby sofa or even an area rug on which to place Mary. But a quick glance at the foyer with its worn and faded painted checkerboard floor leading to the stair hall told me that the house was virtually empty. The only thing in the adjoining living room was a massive, fieldstone fireplace. On the wide board pine floor was an old painted floor cloth that had seen better days.

Calling on muscles that I’d assumed had been permanently lost due to a combination of age and apathy, I managed to drag the unconscious Mary from the entrance hall and out to the front porch. I made an attempt to lift her limp form onto the porch swing only to discover that it was simply not possible. With the unresponsive Mary slipping from my grasp like a lump of Jell-O, I decided it would be easier on both of us if I propped her up in a sitting position against the porch railing. Once that was done, I took off running for the van, where I grabbed Pesty’s travel bowl of water. Gasping for breath, I sped back to Mary, doused her with the contents of the bowl, and prayed it would do the trick. It did.

“Oh my stars,” cried Mary as her eyes fluttered open, “what happened? How come I’m all wet? Is it raining?”

“No, it’s not raining, and you’re wet because I threw water in your face, you know like they do in the movies when someone passes out. Joan Crawford did it all the time.”

“I passed out? Now why in the world…” Mary stopped in midsentence, her peaches-and-cream complexion turning almost as white as her hair. “Oh no,” she moaned, “it’s all coming back to me. What a shock finding her like that.”

“Her who?” It seemed unlikely that Mary could identify the dead woman, but I asked anyway. “You wouldn’t happen to know her name by any chance, would you?”

“Of course I would, I mean I do,” said the flustered and bedraggled Mary, “it’s Dona Deville.”

It was my turn to go into shock. Grabbing a banister for support, I lowered my head, closed my eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths. I forced myself to pull myself together, at least for the time being. Only later, and in the privacy of Kettle Cottage, would I allow myself the luxury of falling apart.

“Maybe you should go back in there,” suggested Mary, rolling her deep blue eyes in the direction of the foyer, “and check on her. Maybe she’s not actually dead.”

Although I’d had only a fleeting glimpse of the corpse, the ghastly image of the face with its gaping mouth, bulging eyes, and horribly bruised neck had burned itself into my brain.

“Let me put it to you this way, Mar. When was the last time someone greeted you at the door sprawled on the floor and looking like the Pale Rider on a very bad day? Trust me, the woman in there is definitely dead.”

Gathering up what was left of my courage, and without so much as a backward glance at the body in the foyer, I closed the door of the cottage. Unlike Lot’s wife, I wasn’t tempted to take another look.

“Really, Gin,” said Mary, following close behind me as I collected Pesty’s bowl and made my way down the porch stairs, “was it necessary to use dog water to revive me? It seems to me that it would have been quicker and certainly a lot more sanitary to use water from the cottage.”

“Jeez, Mary, I practically save your life, and what do I get for my effort? Unfounded criticism,” I said, shaking my head. “Even an amateur sleuth like me knows better than to disturb a crime scene. As it is, our fingerprints are probably all over the front door, the entrance hall, the porch, and that jiggly porch swing.” I should have come clean with Mary, confessing that what I’d said about not distrubing the crime scene and the presence of our fingerprints was purely an afterthought on my part. But I didn’t. As afterthoughts go, I felt it was one of my best.

Returning to the van, a contrite Mary broke out her emergency supply of sugar cookies. While the two amigos (Mary and Pesty) munched their way to carb heaven, I used my cell phone and called the police. After promising the dispatcher that we would stay put until help arrived, I silently apologized to my ancestors for having doubted the power of Irish intuition and lit a badly needed cigarette.

Only when the normally passive Pesty began to growl softly did it occur to me that whoever was responsible for Dona Deville’s demise might be lurking about. It was a frightening thought and one that I chose not to share with Mary. I figured that she’d had more than enough excitement for one day. Besides, Pesty’s supply of water was running low.

What seemed like hours was in reality only a matter of minutes. With sirens screaming, two police cars (one marked and one unmarked) turned into the driveway, raising clouds of gray dust before coming to an abrupt halt behind the van.

I’d already imagined how things would probably unfold once my no-nonsense, police lieutenant son-in-law, Matt, and his trusty sidekick, Sergeant Sid Rosen, answered my call for help. Most likely, after checking that Mary and I were okay, the tall, dark, and handsome Matt would then instruct the mustaschioed, bald, and stoic Sid to take our statements before sending us merrily, or maybe not so merrily, on our way. With a bit of luck, Pesty might still be the happy recipient of a Farmer John’s doggy bag. As far as I was concerned, the death of Dona Deville was a police matter and I had no intention of getting involved. Of course, everything changed when Police Chief Rollie Stevens, minus Matt and Sid, arrived on the scene.

With his red lips, raisin-like eyes, brown skin, woolly white hair, and chubby physique, the elderly Rollie looks more like the impish gingerbread man of nursery rhyme fame than Seville’s top cop. But there was nothing impish about the man, or the gun he was holding, when he ordered me and Mary to get out of the van.

“Keep your hands where I can see ’em,” instructed the chief as we scrambled to comply. “And I’ll need to see some photo identification such as a valid passport.”

“P…P…Passport?” Mary sputtered. “I have a driver’s license but I don’t have a passport. I almost got one last year when Denny told me we were going to visit a bunch of foreign countries, but when I found out they were all in Disney World’s Epcot Center, I didn’t bother. I never dreamed that I’d need a passport in my own hometown.” Mary’s eyes were about the size of dinner plates and her bottom lip had started to tremble, a sure sign of impending tears.

“Rollie Stevens, are you serious?” I’d almost said, “are you nuts?” but caught myself in time. “You know very well who we are and put that gun away before someone gets hurt.”

Looking more than a bit sheepish, the old policeman returned the weapon to its holster. “I’ve always wanted to nab a couple of female desperadoes before trading in my badge and gun for a set of wings and a harp. This was probably my last chance and now you’ve spoiled it.”

The man looked and sounded so dispirited, I almost felt sorry for him. Most people his age had long ago retired. Thanks to the ironclad contract that the town council insisted he sign, the police chief had the final say as to if and when he would retire. In the meantime, he seemed content to let Matt run the show while he kept himself busy with raising awareness and funds for the many animal projects he supported. I couldn’t even remember the last time that Rollie Stevens headed up a major investigation.

He repeated his request to see some identification, and I handed Rollie my driver’s license. When he laughed out loud at my photo, any sympathy I might have harbored for the old gingerbread man crumbled. Maybe Rollie Stevens wasn’t mad, but he certainly was maddening.

Finished with me and Mary for the moment, the chief turned his attention to the two patiently waiting uniformed officers. After quietly suggesting to Patti Crump that perhaps she could begin gathering evidence, Rollie Stevens ordered Jasper Merkle, a rookie on the force, to start photographing the crime scene.

“I want pictures of everything, especially close-up shots of the stiff. And Jasper, try not to move the body until after Sue Lin Loo has had a chance to check it over,” Rollie said, pronouncing the medical examiner’s full name as if it were one word. “She should be along within the hour, I hope.”

Mary and I watched with Rollie Stevens as the slightly built, nervous Jasper Merkle hurried to catch up with the solidly built, confident Patti Crump. A string of expletives could be heard when the two officers entered the cottage. Judging from the high pitch of the voice, I guessed correctly that the obscenities had come from the rookie cop.

“I’d venture that about now,” Rollie said with a chuckle, “young Jasper’s sorry he gave up taking wedding pictures for this. Even the ugliest bride is better looking than a corpse. And smells a hellava lot better, too.”

Still chuckling, the chief reached through the open passenger window of his unmarked police car and retrieved two containers of coffee along with a couple of napkin-wrapped doughnuts. Handing the coffee to me and the pastries to Mary, he then ordered us to return to the van and remain there until someone was available to take our statements.

“And just when the hell might that be?” I asked, knowing I sounded as irritated as I looked and felt.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Rollie called over his rounded, stooped shoulder as he headed for the cottage.

“Rollie Stevens, if you think a couple of stale doughnuts and some cruddy convenience-store coffee will be enough to turn me and Mrs. England into happy campers, then you’re in for a big surprise.”

Turning around, the chief quickly retraced his steps back to the van where Mary and I were seated. Sticking his round, brown face through the open driver’s side window, a grinning Rollie Stevens politely informed me that I owed him three dollars for, as he put it, the java and sinkers.

While I contemplated the punishment for assaulting a police officer, Mary grabbed a crumpled bill from the van’s console. Leaning across the seat, she passed the money to Rollie and magnanimously donated the change to the police chief’s current favorite charity—Coats for Cats.

Rollie graciously thanked Mary for her generous contribution and headed back to the cottage with a smile on his lips, a spring in his step, and my twenty bucks in his pants pocket.

Resigned to the fact that we probably wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon, I took a swig of the lukewarm coffee and lit a cigarette. Within seconds of doing so, I found myself listening to another pitch from Mary about the patch. As if on cue, and despite the open windows and the steady breeze that kept the van relatively smoke-free, Pesty began to sneeze. Stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette, I glared at the crumb-encrusted duo and wondered if they knew how close they’d come to sharing the same fate as a certain health spa owner.

Finishing the truly awful-tasting coffee, I flipped open my cell phone. Without the aid of the perpetually missing reading glasses, I eventually was able to speed dial JR’s home phone.

Although modern technology identified me as the caller, JR relied on personal experience to identify the purpose of my call. Without so much as a “hello” she proceeded to do just that. Or so she thought.

“Okay, Mother, you’re having trouble deciding what to wear to your little tête-à-tête with Dona Deville. So what else is new? Since you obviously need my advice, I’ll give it to you. Wear anything but that green jumpsuit. It makes you look like the Jolly Green Giant. Ho, ho, ho.”

“Very funny, JR. For your information, your father happens to like that outfit.” I waited until she stopped laughing before giving her a fast rundown on all that had taken place, beginning with Mary’s gruesome discovery and ending with the police chief’s answer as to when we would be free to leave.

To say that JR was surprised and shocked would be an understatement.

“Oh m’god, Mother. How awful. Is there anything I can do to help you and Aunt Mary?”

“Yes, do me a favor and get ahold of Matt. Tell him I don’t want to solve the crime. I just want to go home. Mary’s out of cookies, Pesty’s out of water, and I’m out of sorts.”

“Sorry, Mom, no can do. Matt and Sid Rosen are in the middle of an important investigation and that’s about all I can say. I’m afraid that this time, you’re on your own.”

I was about to hang up when JR made me an offer that sounded pretty good under the circumstances.

“I know it’s not exactly the kind of help you were looking for, but how about if I get in touch with Pops and Uncle Denny, explain the situation, and invite them to have dinner with me and the twins tonight. I’m making spaghetti. You and Aunt Mary are invited, too, of course. We’ll eat around five thirty or six, depending on when everyone can get here.”

“Thanks, JR, I really appreciate it,” I said. “Your father took his cell phone when he left for his golf match with Uncle Denny so you should be able to reach him. If you run into a problem, give me a call on my cell phone.”

“Will do. And, Mom, I’m sorry for making fun of the green jumpsuit. You always look good no matter what you wear. Gotta go. Love ya. Bye.”

Despite Matt not being available to rescue me, the call to JR brightened my outlook. The thought of sharing dinner with family appealed to me a lot more than solving a grisly murder, which is what a certain, rather wacky police chief was going to have to do. In addition to my twenty dollars, Rollie Stevens also had my sympathy, and this time he could keep it.