Eine Kleine Murder (18 page)

Chapter 32

Interlude: A musical composition inserted between the parts of a longer
composition; an intervening or interruptive period (Eng.)

Rubato: Literally “robbed”; meaning to dwell on and prolong prominent melody-tones or chords. This requires an equivalent acceleration of less prominent tones, which are thus “robbed” of a portion of their time-value (Ital.)

It seemed like lunch had been days ago. I was out of cheese, and the sandwiches from Grace were too bedraggled to eat, so I made a peanut butter sandwich in my kitchenette and ate it on the back porch, a soft breeze sifting in. I could see the side of Eve's place from the wicker rocker.

I was formulating a plan.

After only a few bites, I looked around to see what was making the floor vibrate so violently. It was my knee, jiggling up and down like a snare drummer's stick from thoughts of my “plan.” The realization killed my appetite. I hoped this reconnaissance mission wouldn't get me killed.

Okay, it's not a big deal. I've been there already. Eve will think I'm visiting, just a normal visit. I'll say I want to chat about, um, about what's been happening, about the Toombses. She likes to trash them.

I knew I could get her going on that subject pretty easily. But what if she had killed Toombs? If anything, however, she was a poisoner, and he was stabbed, right? I told myself I was doing this for the Fiori kids. I had to go through with it.

Eve had put something into the trash bin last night. I would have a problem if she had already thrown out her cookies. Shoving my misgivings to the back of my mind—with a great deal of difficulty, I must confess—and pushing myself out of the rocker, I headed for Eve's, leaving it swaying behind me.

Eve threw her front door open and clasped my hand in her bony one, dragging me inside. “Hello there, dearie. Come on in, come on in for awhile. Good to see you, Cressa.”

No problem getting in. She guided me to a dark green stuffed chair and invited me to sit, sit. Now, would she offer me something to eat?

“Wait a sec,” she said, grabbing the small plastic garbage bag beside the door. “I'll be right back. Gotta take this bit of trash out. I forgot it last night.”

She looked at the bag and shook it, wiggling the loose flesh on her upper arms. Then she rushed out and scurried down the hill. I stood at the screen door and watched her thin, wiry form scurry down to the big canister at the fork in the road. At first I was afraid she had read my mind and dashed out to destroy the evidence. Maybe it hadn't gone out with this morning's trash. But I should be able to retrieve it if there wasn't too much garbage in the bin.

She stood still for a minute after the metal lid banged shut, the first time I had ever seen her not moving. Then she shook her head several times and rushed back up the hill.

“Sit down and relax,” she said, panting from her hurried trip. “You've had such a terrible time. I heard all about it on TV, how you found that old Toombs's body and all. What an awful thing! All this on top of Grace and Ida.”

Her eyes unfocused and she gazed past me, into an unfathomable distance, and intoned, “I have found bodies, too.”

A hush descended as she sat silent for a moment. I shivered, spellbound, waiting for her to reveal her deep, dark thoughts. Maybe she was seeing her murdered children? She soon went on, talking as if she were in a trance.

“No one ever comes over now.” Her voice was oddly flat. “No one but the children. And their parents tell them not to come. You see all my antiques?” She gestured around the crowded room, gave me a vacant stare, and went on.

“I always had a passion for antiques. Henry had a pickup truck. He let me use it weekdays. To go scouting for furniture. I used to find wonderful old pieces. Solid oak.” She stroked the low round table beside her seat. “Covered with layers of paint. Years worth of grime. I'd buy them for next to nothing, haul them home, wrestle them down into the basement. Strip, sand, and finish them. Henry never minded giving me money for my antiques.

“The house looked so lovely.” She sat perfectly motionless, staring straight ahead, her hand lingering on the table, but I could picture her bustling about, acquiring and refinishing furniture at a mile a minute. It was eerie. Goosebumps rose on my arms. “All those old oak and maple pieces, satin finishes. Hardly anyone ever saw them, though. Henry got real upset if I had people over. Antiquing was fine with Henry, socializing was not. I had no idea it would be that bad before I got married.

“It was wonderful to have the babies.” Her voice turned soft and gentle, her eyes warm, for just a moment. She clasped her hands in front of her, looking like she was in prayer. “They loved me so much. And I loved them. Maybe Henry was jealous.” She cleared her throat and continued with a bit more volume. Her knuckles tightened.

“He did try to bring them up right, from the time they were tiny. He was very strict. Well, sometimes he was and sometimes he wasn't. He had spells where he didn't notice anything they did, and other times, he would be on their backs about every tiny little thing.

“I wonder if it was my fault.” A fleeting grimace may have been remorse. Or sorrow? “Maybe I should have kept them in line more. Henry always said I let them get away with murder.”

I shuddered at her phrasing.

“You know,” she said, turning her glassy look my way, “after they were gone I had to leave that house. I woke up screaming every night. My beautiful children.”

Eve's face puckered, but her gaze remained fixed on something unseeable.

“Hayley's girls. They're not happy. Someone is beating them. And Freddie and Pat's kids. They're so poor. It's nice when the children come. The beautiful children. All my beautiful children.”

Eve was so still, I was afraid to move, worried I'd break the spell. And I was terrified of Eve.

Then she shook herself and came back from wherever she had been. She started talking in her usual warm and chatty manner. A drop of chilled sweat ran down my spine.

“I was up on the roof two nights ago, you know, trying to get those darn squirrel holes plugged up. And you know what I saw?” She jumped up. “Would you like something to eat? I have fresh-baked cookies.”

She jumped up and grabbed a tin sitting on the counter. She brought it over to the ornate inlaid coffee table in front of me and opened it.

“Oh no, that's the wrong one. Those are from an old batch.” She frowned. “I thought I dumped those. Hang on a sec. There's a full one somewhere.”

She went back to the kitchen area and, while her back was turned, I recovered myself enough to remember my mission. I reached over. Looked at her again. Her back was still turned. I put my hand into the tin. Kept my eye on her as my hand searched for a cookie.

Eve turned halfway toward me. “You want milk with this?”

I froze. “Sure.”

She turned back and got a carton of milk out. As she stretched up for a glass from her cupboard, I snatched two cookies from the tin. They looked delicious, but they had dark flecks in them.

“Here! Here's a batch I just made this morning.” Eve thrust another tin at me and picked up the first one. I had barely managed to stuff the cookies into my pocket. I waited for Eve to notice they were missing. There had only been five to begin with. What would she do if she saw some were missing? She merely snapped the lid on, however, and asked if I'd like a napkin.

I swallowed with difficulty. A squeak came out when I tried to speak. I licked my lips with a dry tongue and tried, desperately, to look normal.

“I'm terribly sorry,” I muttered when I found my voice. “I thought I was hungry, but I think my appetite is still gone. Losing Gram was such a blow. But thanks very much for the offer.” I didn't know where that thought had come from, but I was glad I figured out how to avoid eating another cookie, and there was truth behind it. Besides the fact that my hands would shake if I tried to hold a glass, there was also the worry of what might be in the milk.

“Don't you want to hear about that night? On the roof?”

“Of course. What were you saying?”
How soon can I leave?

“It must have been the night Toombs died. You found him the next morning. I heard that tractor going. It was way after dark.”

She slipped onto the edge of her chair. “I was up there for ages trying to fix my
roof—had a problem getting that screen to stay put.”

She sat back with a look that said she had delivered a revelation. I didn't see why it should be so unusual to hear the tractor. It was running half the time.

“The tractor,” she repeated, bobbing her head up and down.

“What was it doing?” I was truly puzzled. What was I supposed to make of this?

“That's it, isn't it? It was after dark. Sheila's husband came out of that trailer house they live in, if you want to call it a house—I call it a mess—and he started up that tractor. It was parked right next to their trailer like always. I couldn't see what he was doing too good, but I could see it was him that came out the door. I think Sheila was there, too, but it was too dark to tell. It looked like they hauled something out their door.

“Anyway, he drove that tractor right over to the other side of the lake. Right over to where Toombs's body turned up.” She waved her hands in that direction.

“But the body was way into the woods,” I protested weakly. “The tractor couldn't get in there.”

“Well, I know what I saw. Martha was out there, too.”

“Martha Toombs?”

“Yep.”

“With Wayne and Sheila?”
What?

“No, it was later. After Wayne drove that tractor back up here and parked it. They went in, I guess. Then I was climbing down the ladder, couldn't see a blessed thing, it was so dark, and here comes Martha walking up the gravel road. But she wasn't walking on the gravel, she was on the side, on the grass, where it doesn't make any noise.”

“Where did she go?” I couldn't fathom what meek Martha would be doing out there.

“I was nosy about that, myself, although I didn't know anything yet, of course. About her husband's murder, I mean. But I climbed back up and watched. It was too dark to see well by then, but I could catch a glimpse of her every once in a while, and it looked like she went to the Weldons' trailer. She didn't go in, though, or knock or anything. She went past it. I don't know how far she went, but I don't think she had time to go all the way to the other side of the lake before I saw her coming back. Do you think they're all in cahoots?”

“Have you told any of this to the police?”

“Nope. What do you think I should do?” She leaned toward me, her eyes wide. “A lot of suspicious doings went on that night. Do you think they would all have something to do with Toombs?”

“I couldn't possibly tell, Eve. And you can't either. Don't you think you should tell the police what you saw?”

“I might,” she said slowly, squinting at me and turning it over in her mind. “I don't much like talking to police.”

It dawned on me she might not be telling the truth. Could she be making these things up because she didn't like the Weldons, or the Toombses? How could she see Martha in the dark when she couldn't even tell if Sheila was with Wayne just before that?

Or is she trying to use me? This could be a sly way of getting false information to the authorities without implicating herself. She probably thinks I'll report her stories if she doesn't. Then she can either deny or affirm them.

“Wouldn't you like a cup of tea or something?” Eve asked, an anxious look on her wrinkled, yet childlike face.

Sure
.
Probably laced with arsenic.

“No, really, I'd better be going.” I rose from my seat and thrust my hands into my pockets. Bad idea. I hoped she hadn't heard the crunch of the cookies.

“But what did you come over for?” She nailed me.

I didn't know what to say. I had prepared an excuse for my visit, but I had counted on using it when I first came over, and now I forgot what it was.
What I really came for was to steal the cookies that are now in my pocket, and to see if you're as mentally unstable as I suspected. I guess I found the answer to that one.

“I, I guess I wanted to talk with someone about… about this tragedy.”
Yeah, that's it.
“You've been a great comfort. Thanks so much.” I smiled insincerely and fled.

Chapter 33

Attacca: “Attack” or begin what follows without pausing,
or with a very short pause (Ital.)

Before I could become faint of heart, or fainter at any rate, I grabbed my purse from inside the cabin, made sure to lock the front door, and roared off into Alpha. I may have thrown gravel with my tires, but Toombs was no longer around to complain.

I drove straight to the police station and asked to talk to Chief Bailey.

When he came out to the waiting area he peered down and gave me such an odd look, I reached a hand to my nose to feel if a blob of coconut oil was there. His expression, and his height, flustered me.

“I have some evidence,” I said. Damn, I wished my voice wouldn't squeak like that.

“Evidence of what?” How did he manage to look bored when I had
evidence
?

“Well… it's evidence about the murders.”

“The evidence needs to go to Henry County, whatever it is.”

“You don't need to … ?”

“Take it to the county sheriff's office. It's in Cambridge. Do you remember how to get there?”

He made sure I had the directions straight and sent me on my way, not even wanting to see it. I could hear a radio broadcast of a baseball game coming from the office behind him as I left.

Reluctantly, and feeling underappreciated, I got back into my car and made the short trip to the county headquarters building.

I walked through the cavernous old part of the building into the addition and up the modern staircase, trailing my hand along the cool green ironwork banister, to ask the woman at the glassed-in window for Sheriff Dobson. As before, he ushered me into his inner office.

After I sat in the plastic chair in front of his desk, I handed him my package over his littered desk. He peered at the contents through the plastic and aimed his pale blue eyes at me, raising those bristling white-blond eyebrows.

“What is this?”

“These cookies were in Eve's house. She baked them. I'm pretty sure I ate one from this batch. And the Fiori children are in the hospital. And they ate some of these, too. And this is evidence that they were poisoned. By Eve.”

He drummed his fingers on his desk blotter.

“How did you get them? Did she give these to you?” He shook the bag, then set it on his desk.

“Not those, but some just like them. I went and took them when she wasn't looking today. Just now.”

He picked up a pencil and bounced the eraser end on the top folder of a stack to his right. When I'd given my statement about finding Toombs's body, that incessant drumming had almost put me over the edge.

“What you have here,” he said, “is stolen property, not evidence. It's only evidence if the officials have gathered it. I told Harmon that when he brought me those glasses.”

I was startled. I hadn't seen it that way. “Oh. Um, there are a few more in a tin in her house. If she hasn't thrown them out yet.”

He pondered a moment, scratched his temple with the pencil, standing a patch of hair on end, then said, “I'll have these analyzed. They can't be used for legal evidence. You do understand that, don't you?”

Those ice-blue eyes bored into me.

I nodded.

“If they do contain poison, I'll make sure the results are given to the hospital immediately.”

I leaned toward him. “I think they contain rhubarb leaves. I always thought they're poison. Isn't that right?”

“Oh yes, indeed. Especially for a child.” That was confirmation for me that Eve had put those kids into the hospital.

“What about an adult?”

“Are you thinking this has something to do with Toombs's murder?”

“I don't see how it could. Toombs was stabbed, wasn't he?”

Sheriff Dobson contemplated the corner of the ceiling for a moment before he answered me. The overhead light glinted off his light haystack hair. I initially thought he was calling for patience, but he may have just been deciding whether or not to tell me anything more. “Yes, he was stabbed, but the coroner hasn't released his report yet, and, last I heard, he wasn't sure what the cause of death was. Watch the late news tonight. I really can't say any more to you now.”

He thanked me for my misguided help and stood, making it clear it was time for me to leave.

I drove back to my cabin at a crawl, truly puzzled. I followed the turnoff into the complex and passed the yellow house. Mo's car was still parked outside.

Martha Toombs and Mo are in there.

Mrs. Toombs was full of mosquito bites. The woods where Toombs's body was deposited was very buggy. Much more so than anywhere else I'd been around the lake, in spite of what Toombs said about all the outdoors being buggy.

Martha, unhappily married and not sorry her husband was dead. A cringing coward to the bully, Toombs.

And then there's Mo. He was upset his mother was telling me about her personal life. Like father, like son? Would he intimidate her into submission, falling into his father's role?

What was the meaning of Mrs. Toombs's confession about Mo stealing Gram's jewelry? I didn't think that's what she actually wanted to say. Had she been on the verge of confessing she killed her husband? Had she been going to tell me Mo killed him? Or that Mo killed my grandmother and Grace? Maybe she wasn't able to speak her mind. She probably didn't have much experience at it.

I started driving up the hill, past the site of the burnt cabin, a sad derelict place to match my dismal thoughts.

Then past the white house with pastel blue shutters. Hayley's house.

Toombs was shouting at Hayley about “decimation of character” that day when I walked by.

Was Hayley about to expose him as a child molester? Did she kill her stepfather to keep him from her daughters?

Past Eve's cabin.

Crazy Eve. I'm certain she has poisoned the Fiori children. And me, to a lesser extent, since I didn't eat many of the tainted cookies and am an adult, besides. The weird thing is, she seems to be poisoning people she likes, me and the kids.

Why on earth would she poison those kids? Did she poison her own children long ago, as well? Or had the murder of her children, by her husband, unhinged her after so many years? Had she been trying to poison Rebecca and Rachel, too? Sheriff Dobson hinted Toombs may not have died from stab wounds. Was he poisoned?

I stopped in front of my storybook red house, climbed out of the Honda, and unlocked my front door. I turned before going in. The Weldons' trailer was quiet. Neither of them was around.

Could the Weldons have killed Toombs? Since everyone else is suspect, I might as well include them.

Did they dispose of the body using the tractor to transport it part of the way? It wouldn't have gone all the way to where I found him. The vegetation was too thick for a tractor. But he had been dragged. Could I believe any of what Eve told me?

I turned and entered my cozy paneled room. My work was piled on one side of the counter. I spread it out, perched on a stool, and went through the motions of composing. I wasn't really looking at the music, though. Instead, I was seeing a parade of people I suspected in the three deaths.

Lost in my circular thinking, I jumped when a knock sounded at the door.

I slid off the stool, crossed the small room, and cracked the door open.

Mo stood there frowning. It looked like he'd been wearing that shirt for a good long while. And the shirt might have been clean the last time he combed his hair. His black waves were greasy and out of control. Shocked at his condition, I involuntarily backed up a step. Even then the creep was too close to me. I had failed to fasten the door chain, I realized.

“I want to explain about my mother to you, so you won't get any wrong ideas,” he snarled, slashing the air with the flat of his hand, nearly hitting my face.

I wasn't about to invite him in, of course. I spread my feet apart and stood blocking the doorway.

“I have to come in for a minute,” he insisted. “It won't be long. I've got to get back to her.”

“No, you can't—”

But he swept past me with a rough shove and faced me from the middle of the room. I stayed next to the open door, clutching the handle. Sweat sprang up on my palms.

“All right,” I said evenly, drawing a huge breath. I hoped I sounded calm. Animosity, pure hostility, radiated from Mo's thunderous visage. I tried to match it.

“What did you want to say?” I spat, as rudely as I could. “Why not just leave a note under a rock?”

“What? What are you talking about? I want you to understand,” he whined, his voice rising. “I know my mother talked to you.”

Pathetic. You do NOT have my sympathy, no matter what you're going to say.

“My father was not a child molester. Rebecca wouldn't finish her meal and was smarting off to him the other day. That's why he hit her. He never struck anybody without a good reason.”

He glared at me. I glared back. My gaze strayed to his neck. He wasn't wearing a chain.
What a thing to notice.

“The other thing is, I think my mother is going through some kind of adjustment period. She's confused about how she feels. You might even think, from what she said, that she wanted him dead. She's always been afraid of everything, but now, I don't know, she's more afraid. I don't know what her problem is.”

“She didn't tell you what we talked about, did she?”

“Whatever it was, I want you to know she's not in her right mind. It's probably the grief or something. You understand?”

“Yes, I do. Perfectly. I'm glad you came over and explained it. Thank you.”
Of course, Mo wouldn't recognize sarcasm if it coiled around his throat and bit him.

“About the other day,” he began.

“Please leave, Mo. I still have lots of pepper spray left.”

“Bitch,” he growled as he stalked across the room.

I held the door wide open for him and he threw me a hateful look as he brushed by me. I slammed the door and collapsed against it, sliding down to the floor as my legs gave way.