Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 02 - Rekindling Motives (15 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SURE ENOUGH, THE
NEXT day’s Ocean Alley paper had a huge heading:
Retired School Marm Murdered
.

“Marm?” Aunt Madge said in disgust as she ran water in the sink to wash her guests’ morning dishes.
“No one has used that term in years and years. It’s stupid.”

I glanced at the headline.
If they’d used teacher it wouldn’t have fit on one line. I held my tongue.

“And,” she turned from the sink to face me, soap bubbles dripping from her latex gloves onto the floor, “that business about the methyl alcohol is ridiculous.
It would taste terrible. She would never drink enough to kill herself.”

I hesitated,
and then said, “Scoobie said if you put methyl alcohol with a strong-tasting drink it might not taste so bad.”

“And what does Scoobie know about that?”
Aunt Madge asked, furious.

I knew she wasn’t mad at Scoobie, just mad.
“He says he read about it in the library.”

She seemed to sag onto the kitchen sink.
“I just can’t stand to think of her dying like that.”

I walked over and gave her a hug.
“Me either.” Then inspiration struck me. “That’s why we need to keep thinking about Richard’s death. They must be connected.”

Aunt Madge raised her head from my hug.
“Nothing doing.”

For once I gave as good a steely glint in the eye as she did.
I had no intention of telling Aunt Madge or anyone else that Mary Doris Milner had had Richard Tillotson’s baby. That was her business. But, I couldn’t help but think a spurned adult child might have found her. “I liked Mary Doris. I want to figure out how Richard got in that attic.”

Aunt Madge looked at me for a couple
of seconds and then turned back to the sink. “Just don’t get shot at this time.”

I DECIDED TO
WALK to Java Jolt. My back wasn’t feeling a lot better, but some, and I felt as if my whole body needed to stretch. As I left Aunt Madge told me to call her if I needed a ride back. Sounded as if she wasn’t going to hold it against me that I wanted to learn more about Richard’s death.

Which was ridiculous, when you stopped to think about it.
It was more than seventy years since the murder. The thing that nagged at me was that the skeleton was clean and stored with clothes from the 1940s. That meant that long after his death – assuming he died when he disappeared – someone knew where to find his body, could get to it to clean it, and could put it in the old wardrobe. That person had to be pretty unfeeling, and downright kinky.

I tried to envision what the murderer had done.
He couldn’t have buried Richard in Ocean Alley. Beach towns don’t have cemeteries. I know this because Aunt Madge visits Uncle Gordon’s grave on Memorial Day weekend; I went with her often until I was in high school. When I was about ten I asked her why he was so far from Ocean Alley, and she said you can’t bury someone near the ocean; the soil is too sandy and moist. She said that in New Orleans the cemeteries host mausoleums rather than graves. That was certainly obvious after Hurricane Katrina.

I felt a pang of guilt.
I hadn’t gone to the cemetery with her in years.

My mind went back to Richard Tillotson and his murder.
Whoever did it couldn’t bury Richard nearby – assuming he was killed in Ocean Alley – and not everyone had cars back then. Even if the murderer did have a car, where do you drive with a dead body in the trunk? And do you just wander into a cemetery and try to sneak in an extra body?

I glanced toward the ocean and decided to climb up the few steps to get onto the boardwalk so I could walk the last couple
of blocks toward Java Jolt without a row of houses between me and the water. The sun was bright and I shielded my eyes as I looked toward the water, watching waves roll onto the deserted beach and recede. A lot of years had passed since Richard and Mary Doris had looked at the ocean together.

All this time Mary Doris had kept a pretty important secret.
Or had she? Maybe she had told someone. Perhaps, as an adult, that baby had even found its birth mother. But what would that matter? If the adoptive parents had been less than perfect that would not have been Mary Doris’ fault. Anyway, if there had been a reunion it could have been decades ago.

I gave my head a shake as I walked along.
I could not see any way a long ago adoption played a role in a poisoning death now. A sharp gust of wind made me pull up my collar and then thrust my hands into the pockets of my jacket. I felt the notebook I planned to use as I sat in Java Jolt to think and make a list.

I like lists.
Even when things around me seem ridiculously busy, a list of what I need to do instills some order. At least in my mind. After a quick hello to Joe and pouring coffee from his self-serve thermos I plopped my donut and derrière in a chair at the back of the shop.

What I Know

1) Someone killed Richard Tillotson, whom MD loved very much.

2)
The killer (or someone else) put the body somewhere for a time. (Attic would have stunk if in there.)

3)
RT and Peter Fisher did not seem to get along.

4)
RT and PF ran a bakery and were moonshiners.

What I Don’t Know

1)
When did RT’s skeleton get put in the wardrobe in the attic?

2)
Who put it there? Duh

3)
Did MD know something important about who killed RT?

4)
Who benefits most by MD being dead?

My cell phone rang and Gracie Allen’s name was on Caller ID. “I can’t find it anywhere!” She sounded as if she’d been crying. “And I want to get rid of that house.”

It took a couple of seconds before it registered that she may have been talking about the deed to her grandmother’s house.
“It’s not the end of the world, Gracie.” There was a loud sniff on the other end of the phone. “You’ll likely pay more for the title search and an attorney can draw up a new deed, so it’ll be…”

Now she was sobbing.
I couldn’t imagine why she was so upset. “Really, Gracie, it’ll be okay.”
What do you say to a Connecticut-stay-at-home mom who is bawling into the phone?

She calmed a bit and blew her nose.
“That’s only part of it. First you get hurt and the paper has articles about Richard’s disappearance, then poor Mary Doris Milner is killed, and, and…Oh, and the skeleton. I forgot the skeleton!” She was taking up right where she left off.

“Gracie, Gracie, get a grip.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “It’ll get worked out somehow.”

“But it’s all my fault.
My husband wanted to keep the house and I thought it would be a lot more fun to have a place on Cape Cod.” She stopped because I had started to laugh. I couldn’t help it.

That probably wasn’t good either. I tried to keep the humor out of my voice.
“Listen, none of this is your fault. You think poor Richard appeared in that wardrobe because you wanted a place in Cape Cod instead of Ocean Alley? Can you imagine if you kept the house and one of your kids found him? They’d be scarred for life.” I was hoping to make her see how absurd she was being, and for a minute it worked.

“I know, Jeremy
says that, too.”

Jeremy, who’s Jeremy?
Oh, her husband.

She started up again.
“Poor Mary Doris Milner,” she wailed. At this point I realized the four other customers and Joe were staring at me. I grimaced at Joe and shrugged. He pointed to a door behind the counter and I walked back there as I listened. “And she was Annie Milner’s aunt!”

I walked into the tiny room behind the coffee bar and sat on a stool.
“This stuff happened in spite of you, not because of you. Is anyone home with you?”

The response was akin to the local foghorn, followed by words.
“You must think I’m an idiot.”

“No of course not.”
Well, maybe a little, it’s not as if you knew Richard or Mary Doris.
“All of this is upsetting.” I glanced around the small room. It had shelves from floor to ceiling along the back wall and they were lined with small plastic tubs, each with a five-pound bag of sugar, dry coffee creamer, or sugar substitute, all carefully labeled. When the tubs ended there were shelves of napkins and disposable cups.

“The thing is,
” I continued, “it will be over pretty soon, and you’ll have your life back. Plus a place on Cape Cod.”

It took about five more minutes before I thought she was calm enough for me to tell her I had an appointment for an appraisal and had to get going.
I walked back into the shop, which now was empty except for Joe and me. “Jeez, did I scare away your customers?”

“Nah.
They were here long enough to have two refills.” He looked up from pouring beans into a grinder. “Gracie okay?”

“She will be.”
I moved back to my table, happy to sink onto the donut and review my list. I sat with my chin resting on my fists as I concentrated. It didn’t make sense that Peter Fisher would kill Richard. He could be an obvious suspect, and it would mean he and his new bride would have to move in with her mother and siblings, or at least watch out for them. Of course, it could have been an accident.

I glanced at my watch.
It was time to go over to C Street to meet Annie. Joe walked over and picked up my coffee mug as I stood to leave. “Thanks. Anything that saves a couple of steps is good now.”

“I wanted to steal a look at what you were writing,” he said, with an unabashed grin.
“Bet it was about your newest murder mystery.”

“If you’re so smart, you could solve it,” I said, with more good humor than I felt.

THERE WERE FIVE PEOPLE in the former Bakery at the Shore when I got there. You could tell Annie, or someone, had worked hard to clean the place. A recent owner had installed a long bar that looked mahogany. It was clean and had a couple of small stacks of paper sitting on it. Long-dried wallpaper still curled around the mirror behind the bar but the rest of it had been pulled down except for the long wall that included a door that might have led to a former kitchen.

The only person I knew was Jennifer Stenner, and she looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her.
I’ve warmed up to Jennifer a bit, but not a lot. She was one of the ‘cool girls’ when we were in 11th grade and I was miserable, wanting to get back to my usual high school in Lakewood. While my being in Ocean Alley that year was not her fault, she and her friends had been targets of my fantasies to have cheerleading banned, or maybe have all cheerleaders forced to shave their heads. They just looked so damn happy.

One of the three men seated around the table must have just complimented Annie on her work to clean up the place, as she said, “Yes, I’ve been in here several times.
The wallpaper is hard to get down, but it will eventually all come together.”

“Hey Jennifer,” I said, sitting next to her.
“You did a really great job on the reunion.”

While she had regarded me with what seemed to be a forced smile, she now gave me a broad one.
“I’m so glad you liked it. We worked really hard to be sure everyone had fun.”

“The only problem is that Scoobie made off with my Sherlock Holmes bubble pipe.”

“He actually brought it into Stenner Appraisals with a bottle of bubbles.
Didn’t he tell you?”

I could tell half her question was a hidden one.
She wanted to know if Scoobie and I were dating. “Luckily he doesn’t keep me posted on everything he does.”

“That does sound lucky,” Annie said as she sat down on the other side of Jennifer and began introducing attendees to one another.

I felt myself redden, annoyed that Annie was putting Scoobie down.
I supposed I had given her the ammunition for her comment.

“And this is Hardin Grooms, from City Council,” she was saying.
As she introduced each person she was giving them a stick-on name badge, already lettered. “I thought I’d make it easy for us to remember each others’ names this first time we meet.”

It was no wonder I didn’t know the other two men, they were attorneys from other towns in the county.
I had half forgotten that she was running for a countywide office. Jeff Markham looked to be about thirty-five and was exceptionally fit, while Sam Jefferson, the only African-American, could be fifty or thereabouts. His skin had almost no wrinkles, but the graying hair told more about his age than his face did.

While Annie talked I looked at the papers she had passed out that had her summary bio and a full resume.
She had done a lot since high school – finished undergrad in three years, law school, one year in private practice and three with the prosecuting attorney’s office. When she wasn’t working she was tutoring children with low reading skills and she had already been president of the Ocean Alley Rotary Club.
All this and she did her aunt’s laundry.