Minnie Crockwell - Will Travel for Trouble 01 - Trouble at Happy Trails (8 page)

“Yes, I did.”

“How long are you staying?” he asked. “I haven’t had time to check the computer yet.”

“A week.”
 

He nodded pleasantly. “Are you visiting family or…”

The usual round of questions commenced. What he avoided was the subject of Carl’s death.

“No, just traveling around. I’ve been full-time RVing for a few months now.”

He nodded. “I did it for a couple of years, but found it kind of lonely, so I settled down for a bit. Bought this RV park. Now, I golf.”

Which explained the tan.
 

“So, do you live here at the park?”

“No, although I might have to put a rig here. I like to keep a campground host on the premises, but it’s been hard finding a host to come back year after year.”

“You’re only open from April to October, right? So, you could go work here in the summer and go south to golf all winter long.”

“I might just do that!” he grinned attractively. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Oh, I was just stopping by to introduce myself,” I said airily. “I’m doing laundry next door.”

He nodded. I waited for him to say something about the event, but for some reason, he didn’t. Discretion really wasn’t one of my strongest qualities, so I forged on.

“I saw Sally earlier. She was picking up a few things.”

He nodded again and looked beyond me to the park. I turned to follow his eyes, but nothing moved in the park. Was he giving me the polite brush off? I turned back.

“Well, I’d better get back to my laundry. It was nice meeting you,” I said.

“You too,” he said. “Enjoy your stay.”

I turned and rolled my eyes. Okay, so he was discreet…or worried about the reputation of his park. But “enjoy your stay” was a bit much, in my opinion. Clearly, he knew I hadn’t really enjoyed the first night of my stay.

I finished my laundry and returned to my RV. After putting my clothes away, I made myself a sandwich and plopped down onto the couch to eat it. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and exhaustion had caught up with me. My eyelids drooped, and I dozed.

I woke up to see the time on the microwave read 6 p.m. I sat upright. I’d never get back to sleep tonight!
 

“Why did you let me sleep so long, Ben?” I rose and stretched.

You needed your rest, Minerva. I did not like to awaken you.
 

I looked around the RV wondering what to do next. Supper, I supposed. My laptop computer caught my eye, and I went over and turned it on to see who was doing what on social media. And maybe to see if John had emailed me back. Wait! I hadn’t emailed him back. I couldn’t believe it. I dashed off a quick response to his email. He seemed to prefer short and sweet, so short it was.

One and Only Ex,

Whoops! Forgot to get back to you. So much going on around here, and I’ve barely been at this RV park for 24 hours! It seems the dearly departed and deceased Carl had been sleeping around. Hearts are broken everywhere, and murderous glints are in everyone’s eyes. I’m not even sure the dear widow isn’t involved. Things wrapped in plastic have been thrown into sewer pipes, and accusations of guilt run rampant.

The police have failed to contact me with a report of their investigation and findings. Imagine that!

I remain your

Ex-Wife

I reread the email, grinned and sent it off. Ben’s old-fashioned vernacular was rubbing off on me. I didn’t know if John would respond or not the following day, sometimes he just didn’t, and that would be the end of our correspondence until I sent him something new in a few months.
 

Is that a portrait of me, Minerva?

I jumped. I should have been used to Ben’s presence but sometimes I just forgot he was there.
 

“You didn’t read my email, did you, Ben?”

No.

His monosyllabic answer surprised me. He was usually so free with his words, using more than most to say the same thing.

“Oh! Okay. Where?” I looked at my computer screen. I had forgotten I had copied and saved the portrait of Peregrine Ebenezer Alvord onto my computer screen

“Yes, that is you.” I studied the portrait—the long dark sideburns that traveled almost to his chin, the thickness of his black hair, the aquamarine of his eyes, the dimple in his chin.

Handsome, handsome man. I sighed inwardly. Such a shame.

Yes, I think so, too.
He chuckled.
That it is a shame I passed so early in life, not that I consider myself particularly handsome.

He made a sound as if he was clearing his throat.
 

So, you know what I look like then. How long have you known?

“I found this page a couple of months ago, just after we first ‘met.’”

And it remains visible to you?

“I keep it on my screen and look at it once in a while to remind me of what you look like. It’s pretty weird talking to air sometimes.”

I can imagine.
 

Of course, it was probably weirder still being a ghost. My heart went out to him.

“You were…
are
a handsome man, Ben.”

Ben coughed, the kind of cough that people make when they’re embarrassed. I smiled. I loved ruffling his feathers.

Thank you, Minerva. You are a lovely woman yourself.

Now, I was blushing.
 

“Oh, pshaw!” I jumped up from the computer table. “Let’s go see what’s going on outside. I can’t believe we have a suicide one day and then nothing happens the next day. It feels like kind of a letdown. My adrenaline wants more, more, more action!”

More death, Minerva? You frighten me.

“No, I don’t want anyone to die. Gosh, no! I just want
something
to happen.”

I opened my door and stepped outside. Twilight was still an hour or so away. I rounded the back of my RV to look at Sally’s trailer. It was still there. I couldn’t see the yellow tape anymore since Bob had pulled it down.
 

“I wish they’d get that thing out of here though,” I said.

Yes, it feels quite ghoulish, does it not?

“And this, coming from a ghost?”
 

Ghosts have feelings, too
, Ben said with a laugh.
I heard a similar statement on that machine you call a television.
 

I laughed over my shoulder…or wherever Ben was.

“Funny!”
 

I turned back to see a police cruiser entering the park.

“Heads up, Ben! Something’s happening!”

I thought about ducking back into my trailer and peeking out of the windows, but I suspected I wouldn’t be able to see anything, so I stuck to the landing and waited for them to pass me. I had no doubt they were headed to Sally’s trailer.
 

To my surprise…and discomfort, they stopped in front of me.
 

“Minnie Crockwell?”

The officer who addressed me was the passenger, a dark-haired Hispanic female. I thought I saw Officer Wilson driving the car, but couldn’t see his face from where I stood. I was hardly about to lean down and look into the cruiser.

“Yes?” I said in a nauseatingly timid voice. Give me a figure of authority, and I caved! I imagined myself spread eagle on the grass moaning repeatedly, “I didn’t do it!”

“Could we speak with you for a moment?”

“Yes,” I said with a quivering chin.

They both stepped out of the car. Officer Martinez, black hair wrapped in a shiny bun with a spectacular figure in a tight uniform, addressed me.

“Could we speak inside?”

Ben! Am I being arrested? Am I suspect or something?

I do not know, Minerva. I am here with you. Have courage.

“Sure,” I said with a confidence I wasn’t feeling. I led the way to the RV. They insisted I precede them inside. I climbed in and turned around to wait for them.

Upon entering, both officers scanned the interior of my RV, although Officer Wilson had seen it the night before.
 

“Let’s take a seat,” Officer Martinez said. “We’d like to ask you a few more questions about the events of last night, and anything you might have seen subsequent to that.”

A single cell in my brain wondered if having a Chief of Police as an ex-husband could help get me out of an arrest. I imagined not.

I sat down on one side of my dinette set. Officer Martinez took the other bench, and Officer Wilson elected to sit in the driver’s seat which was pivoted toward the living area.

My hands were cold, and my forehead felt wet from sweat. I rubbed at it and passed a hand across my upper lip.

Officer Martinez pulled out a pad of paper and began to speak.

“Now, you didn’t know the deceased or his wife until yesterday, is that correct?”

I nodded. “That’s right. I bumped into Carl on the way out of the office when I first pulled in. He seemed angry. And I met Sally when she checked me in.”

“Do you know what Mr. Richardson was angry about? What was he saying? And who was he talking to?”

“He said ‘We’ll see about that’ and ‘excuse me’ when he bumped into me. He was talking to Sally.”

“And what was Mrs. Richardson saying or doing?”

“She was crying. She said something about ‘you know how it is with husbands.’”

“What did she mean by that?”

I shrugged. “I think it was just a generic statement about fighting with one’s husband.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“Not really, not then. We just talked about the usual ‘where was I from.’ Stuff like that. She did say she didn’t know what to do with the RV if Carl left her, but she didn’t say why he would.” I hesitated to offer more information at this point, though I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t want to incriminate anyone unfairly.

“You said ‘not then.’ Did Mrs. Richardson talk to you more later on?”

I nodded. “She did, when I found her wandering outside, covered in blood. She told me that Carl had been having an affair, and had a history of affairs. She said they’d had a fight and that she’d gone to the office to work. When she returned, he was dead.”

Officer Martinez shot Officer Wilson a look. His face revealed nothing.
 

“And that is the last that you spoke to her?”

I shook my head again. “No, I saw her this morning when she and her brother came to get some things from the RV.”

“Her brother?”

“Yes, Bob. He came up from Astoria, Oregon, yesterday. Apparently, he was already in town, but Sally didn’t know it.”

Officer Martinez shot Officer Wilson another look. I could imagine what they were thinking, but they were the police, not I. It was their job to figure out what happened.

“Well, I’m certainly glad Officer Wilson suggested we pay you another visit today. Is there anything else you can tell us about Mr. and Mrs. Richardson or the brother, Bob? What is his last name?”

I closed my eyes for a moment to concentrate.
 

“Stewart, I think.” I took a deep breath. “Well, there’s a lot going on in this park, or so I discovered over the last 24 hours. Most of it centers around Carl. I really don’t want to get anyone in trouble though.”

“Ma’am, this is a police investigation,” Martinez said. “Someone is dead. We need to figure out how or why. If you have any information that is pertinent to the case, you really do need to share it with us.”

Cowed, I sold everyone out…except for Ben.

I told them all that I had heard regarding Carl, Sally, Bob, Karen and Jim. I even offered up that Karen had thrown what she said was a packet of notes into the sewer pipe. And her suspicions that Carl had not killed himself. Then I wondered how quickly I could move my rig and hightail it to another RV park in case someone came gunning for me.

“Is there any chance you could avoid telling folks you got all this information from me? I’m paid up for the week here. I don’t mind moving to another park if someone gets mad, but I’d need some time to find one.” With those sentences, I revealed that I was a coward, cheap, a weenie
 
(the same as coward), and a snitch (though I had no loyalty to the strangers at the park). To say that I wasn’t proud of myself hardly described my emotions.

You are too hard on yourself, Minerva. Much too hard.

Maybe not hard enough, Ben!

Officer Martinez sat back and eyed me with her dark eyes. She didn’t smile. I wished she would have.
 

“And you didn’t think to call us with this information?”

“Well, no. I assumed that you all would do your own police work and find all this out. Just like you’re doing now.”

She half smiled. “I see.”

“Besides, I don’t know if a crime has been committed. You really wouldn’t expect me to call you if someone dropped an inanimate object short of a bomb into a sewer pipe, would you?”