Eine Kleine Murder (21 page)

Gram! I don't want this to be true!

“Not just from them. From lots of people. I know Ida had been talking about going to the police because of her stolen jewelry. He was afraid of what would happen to Mo.” Martha rubbed both hands on her cheeks and forced out her strangled words. “He didn't just steal from your grandmother and Grace, he's stolen from almost everybody here. He has bad friends up in the Cities, too. I think they've even robbed jewelry stores there. Mo turns up with such nice stuff sometimes. Every once in a while he gets strange calls, then disappears for a couple of days.”

She lowered herself into the recliner, but popped up as soon as she touched down.

“The night Grace died, my husband came home soaking wet. The next morning I snooped in Mo's room. I didn't find anything there, but I found Grace's earrings in our bedroom. In my husband's drawer. Then I knew for sure Mo had taken them. And that his father knew.”

I guess I knew about those earrings. And what Martha had done with them.

Oh, Grace. I don't want any of this to be true.

“Grace told everybody about those missing earrings,” she said. “I knew what they looked like. She wore them a lot. I know they were hers.”

“So you think your husband killed Ida and Grace? Are you going to tell the police?”

“I don't just think he did, I
know
he did. He was trying to keep Mo out of prison. I can't really blame him for that. But the police will be here soon anyway. They were here just now and, and they, they dug up something.”

Chapter 37

Oder: Or; or else (Ger.)

It was official: I couldn't hope to punish Gram's murderer—he was already dead. My shoulders sagged at the thought, as I trudged back up the hill, playing Martha's statements over and over in my mind, my desire for the beach evaporated. I would never have the satisfaction of seeing her killer punished. I thought Toombs must have been the person who left that note on my porch.

How could he have killed my grandmother? My incredible Gram? Both she and Grace Harmon, wonderful women, would have had lots of good years left. They were gone just because that moron, that idiot, that bastard, Mo, stole their jewelry.

It was not to my credit that I had hurt Martha. The poor woman had had enough suffering without that. But I would love to hurt Mo further. She said the police had dug up something. I assumed that would be the rest of her mushrooms.

An engine noise behind me made me look back to see two Henry County cars pass the beach and turn onto the concrete apron of the yellow house. When Mrs. Toombs emerged a short while later and was escorted into one of the cars, I tried to fade into the scenery. I was sure I was the reason she was being arrested. This was all because of the mushrooms I'd given Sheriff Dobson.

I hurried back to my cabin and flipped on the television. A soap opera was interrupted within two minutes. A reporter, face set for serious news, was accompanied by a logo that screamed “Breaking News.”

“Martha Toombs has just been picked up at her lakeside home and taken to the County Courthouse for questioning in connection with her husband's death, sources say. It is not known if she is a suspect or not. The funeral of Grace Harmon, the second woman murdered at Crescent Lake, will be held tomorrow at the Alpha Lutheran Church at two o'clock. No other details are available at this time.”

This was accompanied by a jerky video of Martha looking bewildered and walking from the squad car into the county sheriff's building. At least they'd given her time to take her rollers out.

“Evangeline Evans, of the same lake complex, is still being held in conjunction with the poisoning of the five young children, who remain in stable condition. A charge of attempted murder is expected later in the week, according to the DA's office. And now these messages.”

The station swung into a series of ads and eventually the news returned to cover other topics. At least they had the right number of children this time.

It was getting hot out. I changed into my sundress and piled my hair up off my neck, feeling fretful and restless. I had nothing to do. Nothing I
could
do. It was all so unreal. A few days ago, these were all normal people living normal lives, or so I thought. Right now there wasn't a single one I wouldn't suspect of at least some crime.

It sounded like Toombs had died of poisoning. Why else would they pull Martha in? And they were focusing on her because of the deadly mushrooms I had turned in. I didn't want the poor soul to be guilty of killing him. Okay then, if she didn't do it, who else could have poisoned him? For the umpteenth time, I made a list in my head of possible wrongdoers.

Mrs. Toombs—poisoned her husband with the mushrooms. Or did she? Hayley may have done it because he was molesting her children, and Martha was helping her daughter hide the evidence.

Eve—poisoned at least the Fiori children, maybe her own. She had certainly poisoned me. Maybe she did it to others, too.

Al Harmon—certainly knew about poison mushrooms, too, through Grace. What was he looking for in the clearing near the place where Toombs's body was found? I wondered if it was his knife, which police said was the murder weapon. If it was his knife, wasn't it logical that he had killed Toombs? Did he poison
and
stab him? Would he have killed Gram and Grace, too? I'd never believe that.

And the Weldons—if Eve was to be believed, they had driven the tractor to the clearing. I knew the yellow cushion could corroborate that the tractor had been used to transport the body. The cushion that was no longer there. It had to have blood on it. But I couldn't think of a reason for them to have poisoned or stabbed Toombs, other than he was working them too hard.

Mo could even have killed his father to protect his mother. But, I had to admit, that wasn't likely. Certainly not by poisoning.

The Fioris—they'd done something Pat didn't want Freddie talking about in front of me. He didn't think they should ask Martha Toombs to loan them money after “what they had done.” Maybe he had scruples about asking for money from the widow of the man they had murdered?

And Daryl? I didn't want to believe Daryl could have anything to do with any of this. He might want to kill Mo, but how about Mo's father? Hmm, he did say he hated Toombs the other night. I recalled the startling similarity of the father and son, especially in silhouette, and presumably also in the darkness. If Rebecca and Rachel could mistake one for the other, Daryl could, too.

Too many “ifs” and “maybes.” One more thing puzzled me, on top of all this. Might as well try to clear that thing up. At least it was one mystery I could solve.

Chapter 38

Narrante: Narrating; as if telling a story (Ital.)

I slipped my sandals on, walked to Hayley's, and knocked on her screen door. The inside door was open and a television was blaring in the front room. Her cabin, like her mother's, was more of a house than a cabin, with several separate rooms. I could see through the screen into a living room with a kitchen beyond that. Two doors led to what were most likely bedrooms.

“Yes?” Hayley's greeting was tentative.

“I wonder if I could talk to you for a moment?”

“Do you know they've just arrested my mother?” Hayley's voice was ragged, tears ran down her face. “I don't think I can talk to anyone right now.”

“I'm sorry.” I put as much sympathy as possible into my voice, considering I had to raise it quite a bit to be heard over the television. “I was trying to get to the bottom of what happened to the Fiori children, and I wondered if your girls could help at all.”

“Oh, all right.” Hayley sniffed, then reluctantly let me in and pointed me to a stuffed chair. She even turned the TV volume down, much to my relief. Hayley went to call the two girls in from the back porch, which, like mine, overlooked the water.

“This lady wants to ask you something,” said Hayley, resignation on her face.

I realized Hayley and I hadn't formally met, but this wasn't the time for formal introductions. We both knew who the other was. She wasn't at her best, her eyes rimmed with red and her light-colored hair flying around her face in tangles.

The two girls stood silent and curious in front of me, waiting.

“Tell her about your grandpa,” Hayley said.

Before I could protest I wasn't going to ask them about that, the older one answered. “I don't want to talk about him. He wasn't nice to us. He wasn't nice to Grandma. And he wasn't nice to Mrs. Miller.”

Mrs. Miller? He wasn't nice to my grandmother? I guess not. He killed her, huh?

“Never mind that,” I said. “What I wanted to ask you about was, I wondered if you ate any cookies at Mrs. Evans's the last time you were over there.”

The younger girl looked down at the carpet, swinging her Barbie doll upside down by one foot, but the older one, Rebecca, spoke for both of them.

“I had one bite and I spit it out and Rachel had two cookies.”

Rachel raised her head and flashed defiance up at her older sister. “No, I didn't, I didn't eat any.”

“You took two,” countered her sister and thrust two fingers before her face.

“I know, but I didn't like ‘em, so I put ‘em in my pocket and threw ‘em away.” The girl wrinkled her nose and stuck out her lower lip to illustrate her distaste.

“I see,” I said. “That's all I wanted to know.”

The girls shot each other relieved looks. Then they ran back to their game on the porch.

“Thank you,” said Hayley to me.

“For what?”

“I thought you would ask them about their grandfather. Mo says my mother told you that story about them being molested by him.”

Not exactly. But that's what Mo thought she told me. She took my silence for assent, though.

“I'll tell you what sort of person my stepfather was.” She glanced at the porch and lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “He was a drunk. Just like my father and my ex-husband. Life can be so damn discouraging, you know. I try to find a guy who's suitable, but there aren't any unattached guys in Alpha or New Windsor, or any of these little towns. I have to go into the Cities to have a drink, even to meet any guys. And, somehow, all the ones I meet are the same. I think they're nice, then …” She looked at the ceiling and pressed her lips together, her eyes growing moist again.

Since no one had ever mentioned the father of the girls, I assumed he was absent and her judgment of men was even worse than mine.

“But my stepfather had more problems than drink. He hated everyone except his precious Mo. Mo has
real
problems. Like he takes after his father, mostly. But at least his father didn't steal things—that I know of.”

“Did Mo take anything besides jewelry?”

“That, and money.” She shook her head. “I don't know what's going to happen to him without his father there to bail him out of every jam he gets into. He's never been punished, or even caught, for anything he's ever done.” She huffed out a breath heavy with disgust. “Mo is the only person in the world that's sorry that old bastard is gone.”

Rebecca and Rachel shrieked with laughter in their play. I was glad to hear it; I'd never seen them smile. Hayley scooted closer to me and lowered her voice again. “I'll tell you what was happening to my girls. He molested them all right, but I don't think it was the way Pat Fiori thinks. It's true, he would hit them for the tiniest stupid thing. He hit my mother, too. He's, I mean, he
was
a bully, hitting women and children whenever he felt like it.”

Hayley's eyes sparked, looking like Rachel's a minute ago when she defied her sister.

“For some reason, one day Pat talked to Rebecca and Rachel. I wasn't there, but she later told me she thought he was sexually abusing them. The old coot even belted me when I brought that up with him. I don't know whether he really was or not, but, whenever I ask Rebecca and Rachel what they do with their grandfather, they never say anything about sexual stuff.” The soft hair she ran her hand through was the color of corn silk. Maybe it was a preview of how her daughters' wispy hair would look when they were grown.

“Don't get me wrong,” she said, “I'm glad he's dead. Real glad. But I think the rumor Pat Fiori started may have been what caused him to be killed, and I'm terrified my mother may have killed him.”

“Why are you telling me this?”
I wish she wouldn't.

“They've already arrested Mom. What can it hurt? She's probably told them everything.”

“I don't think they've exactly arrested her. The news said they were questioning her.”

“Oh sure. And keeping her in a jail cell in between questions.”

“So you think she killed him because of Pat's story?” My curiosity got the better of my common sense, as usual. My common sense told me I was better off not knowing any more than I already did. My curiosity said: “nonsense!”

“Probably not just because of that. But it was the last straw. I had dinner with them that night.” Hayley leaned back and spoke in a soft monotone that belied the emotion she was suppressing. An advertising jingle on television for toilet bowl cleaner made for surreal and noisy background music.

“I'm so afraid for Mom. That night she was acting real strange. She made a casserole that was stuffed with mushrooms. She knows I don't like mushrooms, so she had fixed a tuna salad for me to eat. I thought that was kind of funny. She knew I was eating with them that night and she fixed a casserole full of mushrooms, which I hate. She usually doesn't do stuff like that.”

Had my casserole contained those mushrooms, too? Good thing I'd thrown it out.

“She didn't eat any of it, either, and she loves mushrooms. My girls don't eat casserole at all, so they had peanut butter sandwiches in front of the TV. Then, after supper, she threw away the leftovers, which was the strangest of all. Mom never throws away leftovers.” Hayley shifted in her chair and I shivered. I chose to believe my casserole was a fresh one, and Martha hadn't tried to poison me. Hayley had said she threw the bad one away, right?

Rachel came running in with a decapitated Barbie doll in one hand, a head in the other. Hayley absentmindedly stuck it back on and Rachel ran back into the other room giggling.

“All he talked about at dinner that night was the Weldons, Wayne and Sheila. He was sick and tired of being compared to Sheila's parents. They used to manage this place, did you know that?”

I shook my head.

“He said he was also sick and tired of the way they disobeyed his orders. He had pretty much decided to fire them. He thought maybe Freddie Fiori would do their work, but he hadn't asked Freddie yet.

“Mom didn't think he ought to fire them, but she didn't say too much about it. He was in an ugly mood, he'd been drinking beer all afternoon and evening. She knew she'd better not cross him or he'd hit her. Well, he did anyway, and for nothing at all. She hadn't put enough salt in the casserole, he said, and he hauled off and popped her one.”

I shivered at the thought of the blow.

“I tell you, I was ready to kill him, myself. Mom was crying, the girls were sitting there scared to death, and I was screaming at him. He said he was going to the Weldons' and left.

“Mom told me to take the girls home so they wouldn't be there when he got back, but I didn't want to leave her, so we stayed. We waited for hours, but he never came back.” She glanced toward the porch that held her two daughters.

“The girls fell asleep on the couch. After I don't know how long, Mom told me she'd put bad mushrooms in the casserole. He ate a lot of it, and she pitched the leftovers, but she had a few extra mushrooms she didn't use. I told her to get rid of them.”

Yep. That's what got her arrested. That, and me finding those mushrooms.

“I know she stuck them under a stepping stone—she told me she did that. I thought that was stupid, but she said she didn't want to leave traces of having dug up the yard.

“We didn't know if the poison would kill him or not. We waited and waited and he never came back. We couldn't decide whether or not to call the cops and report him missing. We decided not to. I took the girls home about two in the morning, and the next day you found him over on the other side of the lake.”

Hayley's soft droning voice ran down and fantastic images whirled in my mind as I looked at her bowed head, the cloud of soft hair falling into her face.

It's all true! Martha did poison her husband! And he killed my Gram.

The paradise I'd envisioned as I first drove up here a few days ago fell to pieces.

These aren't regular people with normal problems.
There is real evil here.

If I'd thought the police would permit it, I'd leave today.

I stared down at Hayley's carpeting, a pretty two-tone beige and gray, and thanked God my grandmother wasn't here to witness what had become of her Eden.

Then I remembered Grace telling me about the delayed effects of mushroom poisoning. “Hayley, the authorities haven't released the cause of death. There were stab wounds, too.”

“Yeah, I've thought about that. How bad were they? You saw the body.” She looked at me with hope.

“I couldn't see the wounds.”
I couldn't even tell it was him.
“But listen, Grace Harmon was talking to me about gardening one day. She had a clump of poison mushrooms in her flowerbed, the same ones your mother used, and she told me they would take several hours to make a person ill. Maybe your stepfather didn't die of your mother's poison. Maybe he was stabbed to death before the poison took effect.”

Please don't ask me how I know what kind of mushrooms your mother used.

Hayley brightened. Then sagged. “It would still be attempted murder, wouldn't it?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

I opened the door to leave and there was Martha walking toward me, her head down. She looked up as she neared the door, startled to see me there. About as surprised as I was to see her.

“Martha,” I exclaimed. “How wonderful! They've let you go?”

She nodded, but wasn't overjoyed. “Chief Bailey brought me home. He said something about being born under a lucky star. Ha!” Her bitter laugh was tired, she looked deflated. The curlers hadn't seemed to work because her hair hung lank around her ears. “I don't know when that luck is going to kick in.”

“Mom!” Hayley ran out and hugged her mother, shedding tears of joy and Martha sobbed with her. Rebecca and Rachel soon followed, squealing with delight to see their grandmother.

I left them to their reunion.