Murder by Artifact (Five Star Mystery Series) (5 page)

The door opened behind him and the women trooped back inside. The chatter was dying down. Winifred had taken her photographs. When she began taking her notes and continuing the interview, Tony got the feeling she was willing to give the museum project the respect it was due. The newspaper needed articles.

Tony waited until Winifred began to put away her camera gear before he tried to talk to her. “Hey, Winifred?” He took a step forward. “What’s the
Gazette
’s out of town circulation? You know, approximately how many out-of-towners will read about the new museum?”

Winifred’s perpetual frown deepened, and he was struck once more by how his high school classmate looked older than his mother.

“More than stay within the county. Probably about three thousand.”

“All within driving distance of Silersville?”

“Most of them, I guess.”Winifred flipped her notebook closed without taking her eyes from his. “A few get mailed out of the country. One even goes to China.”

“Where would you say the largest portion goes?” Tony wondered who in China would be interested in local gossip, which was the bulk of each edition.

Her eyes narrowed. “Why the sudden interest in my newspaper? Is there something I should know about?”

Winifred, for all her faults, could smell a story. He shook his head. “My mom and aunt are working hard on this project.” He edged around the subject. Although he had gone to high school with Winifred, or maybe
because
he had, the two of them didn’t get along very well. “I was just curious about how much publicity they might be getting and where the information was going.”

She stared at him for a full minute, assessing his statement. Finally, she appeared to accept his story at face value and reached into her pocket for her keys. “Well, if this is going to make tomorrow’s edition, I’d better get going.”

Even though she hadn’t answered his question, Tony squeezed into the corner to let her pass.

The
Silersville Gazette
came out twice a week, in the evening, and he knew Winifred’s part-time reporters couldn’t come close to doing it without her.

Once she was gone, he glanced around, his eyes searching for the mayor’s wife. He thought Doreen might be trying to hide behind his wife. Good luck with that. Tony slipped an antacid tablet out of his shirt pocket and popped it into his mouth as he looked directly at Theo. When she smiled at him, he tipped his head only slightly. The girl he had married was brilliant. She knew what he wanted. As casually as she could, she pushed Nina out of the way and then dragged her around to the far side of the tables, leaving Doreen totally exposed with no place to run.

Realizing she was trapped, the mayor’s wife capitulated. She brushed past him and went back outside.

Tony got right to the point. “Do you know anything about the disappearance of a lawn ornament from the Flowers’ home?”

“No.” Doreen’s lips twitched, deepening the sneer. “I imagine it would be hard to know if one was missing. There ought to be an ordinance against displaying crap like that in public.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve mentioned your feelings to any of the Flowers clan?” He’d be surprised if she deigned to talk to Pansy about anything other than the orders of the day. He sincerely hoped Pansy was paid well for her trouble. Housekeeping for the Queen had to be a thankless job.

“I do remember telling Claude Marmot he ought to pick up some of those things when he’s making his trash pick up. They are simply hideous.”

To him, the most surprising thing about her statement was learning Queen Doreen had deigned to speak to Marmot-the-Varmint. Claude Marmot was the county trash collector and not well known for his tidy personal habits. Truth be told, he smelled worse than the dump. With the exceptional heat of late, that was saying something. Tony supposed he would have to drive out to the dump. Maybe he’d get Wade to ride along on the fun jaunt. Just in case the donkey was out there, he could have it checked for fingerprints. The county had paid to send Wade to Quantico for special training by the FBI. If Doreen had touched it, Tony wanted to know about it. He backed the Blazer out of the way and watched as Doreen climbed into her Volvo and tore out of the site, her tires throwing clumps of mud and loose grass.

Theo felt as though she had escaped from prison by the time she and Nina got back to her studio. The whole business with Doreen and Winifred had wasted the whole morning. She did like the new pattern idea circulating in her brain and couldn’t wait to start working on it.

“You can help me work up the mystery quilt pattern.” She reached into a drawer and handed Nina a stack of various cotton fabrics cut into small squares. “Sew these first. Don’t worry about the colors matching or anything, just sew any two together, right sides of the fabrics facing to make twosies until you run out. Press the seam toward the darker fabric and then sew two sets together to make a square.”

Nina furrowed her brow as she examined the wild assortment of colors and fabrics. “These are hideous together. You’ve got flowers and plaids and polka dots all mixed together.”

“Don’t worry about matching the colors or even separating them into lights and darks, just randomly sew. I know you like to overthink colors. Forget it. You’ll love doing this. No thinking required.”

Nina’s expression remained uncertain. “Slave driver.”

“Hey, school’s out. You don’t have anything better to do until you go to the university for your continuing education stuff. You don’t even have mom excuses, because I happen to know the kids are staying with their father.” Theo poked her in the shoulder. “You work for me now.”

“What’s the story with Tony and Doreen? What did he want with her?” Nina went to Theo’s spare sewing machine and began stacking her squares. “For a moment, I dreamed he was about to drag her off, handcuffed and screaming.”

“That picture does have a certain allure, doesn’t it?” Theo grinned at her best friend. “I have no idea what was going on. No one keeps a secret better than Tony does.” She handed Nina a new spool of thread. “Unlike you.”

“Hey, not fair. I can keep a secret. It’s just the people I tell who have loose lips.”

Tony knew Claude Marmot fairly well.

Honest to a fault, the man also had a deep and abiding love of garbage. His one-room house sat just off the road between Silersville and the Park County landfill. Because he retrieved a lot of the discards and decorated his lawn with them, it was hard to tell where the line between his home and the landfill was drawn.

Sitting in the passenger seat of the Blazer, Wade gave a low whistle. “It looks like he’s adding on.”

Tony pulled into the gravel driveway, carefully avoiding hitting any of the assorted “rescued” items. After he parked, he saw what Wade meant. Slightly behind the house was a skeleton of a building. It consisted of a framework of two-by-fours and some roof trusses.

Claude was in the process of lifting a three-legged table from the back of his battered car/truck, a sedan he had converted into a pickup. Formerly a midnight blue 1989 Crown Victoria, the car had been cut and spliced. The back seat area and trunk became an open bed. The back seat now sat under an awning from the old bank building. The awning dangled crookedly from mismatched salvaged poles, providing cover and shade for the luxury lawn chair.

When Claude spotted them, he smiled, exposing one of the worst sets of teeth in the county. He propped his new find against the side of his unpainted cottage, positioning the corner missing a leg away from the building. As Tony and Wade walked up to him, he continued with his project.

“Afternoon, Sheriff. Wade.” Claude released the table, stepped back and looked surprised when the table fell over.

“New treasure?” Tony asked. He was careful to stay upwind of the man.

“Yep.” Claude scratched his belly where it was exposed between the bottom of his filthy t-shirt and the top of his even filthier jeans. He was the hairiest man Tony had seen. His belly looked like it was covered with black fur. “People are just too wasteful for words.” Claude pointed at the new construction. “Old man Nelson paid me a hundred bucks to take it away.”

“Really? Why?” Wade asked.

“Beats me.” Claude flapped his beefy arms. “He’s been taking the shingles and siding off for months. Then, all of a sudden, he wanted this gone. There was an old freezer inside I wouldn’t take ’cause he wouldn’t remove the door. Lazy bastard.” His toothy grin reinforced the slight rodent quality of his face, part of the source of his nickname. “The old coot called the building a squirrel-infested mess. It looked like a gift to me. I can add it on to my place and maybe have enough space for my wife.”

“Wife?” said Wade.

“Yep. I’ve got her all picked out.”

Tony’s mind shied away from the idea of what a Mrs. Marmot would be like and what he meant by picking her out. Instead, he focused on the rejects Claude had adopted. Tony didn’t see any sign of traditional lawn ornaments. He saw pieces of pipe, discarded furniture, old bottles and even a rusted bicycle with one wheel.

He looked back at Claude. “I understand the mayor’s wife suggested you ought to remove some yard decorations in town.”

“Oh, yeah. The Queen sure has got some bug up her butt about those things. She had a whole list of things she thought were ‘con-tam-in-a-ting’ the town.” With each syllable spoken, his expression of disdain seemed to deepen.

“And you?”

Claude grinned and snorted, making his belly bob up and down under his too-short shirt. Resting his fists on his hips, he leaned against the side of the house and began using the rough board siding to scratch his back like a bear against a tree.

“I like them just fine and the county’s not paying me to steal folks stuff on the Queen’s say-so.” Claude surveyed his domain. “It’s not exactly my decorating style. I think it cheapens the looks of the place. To each his own.” Claude stopped scratching and his eyes met Tony’s. “As long as you’re here, I ought to tell you she weren’t too keen on some of your mom’s yard stuff neither.”

Tony could practically feel his eyebrows hit the brim of his hat.

“I don’t suppose you’ve noticed if Blossom’s donkey and cart appeared in someone else’s yard?” Wade asked. He bent forward and tried to pet a tiny striped kitten poking its head out from under a tarp near his feet. The timid creature slipped away. “Maybe it was just moved into another place.”

“Donkey?” Claude looked confused for a moment then began to chuckle. “Oh, I know the one you mean. The three-eyed jackass.” He laughed harder, his belly bouncing wildly. “Someone stole that? Wow! Your thieves are really strong or used a front loader. The thing has to weigh a ton.”

His workday over, Tony parked in front his house. He couldn’t help comparing it to the Cashdollar mansion. The similarities ended with two facts. They were both two stories tall and made of brick.

His home sat on a pleasant, tree-covered lot across from the city park. It was the first brick house built in Silersville and some of the bricks had begun to crumble. The bottom line about living in such an old house was everything needed repairs or remodeling. He shook his head. That wasn’t quite true. Not anymore. It did have a brand-new heating and air-conditioning system. The old furnace had died in January and would cost more to repair than to replace. Unfortunately, the money earmarked for a new car for Theo had been diverted into the house.

Technically, Theo owned the house. She grew up in it and eventually inherited it from her grandparents. None of their family could imagine living in a different house in Silersville. It had what their house in Chicago never had—history and character. Maybe a little too much character.

But, it was home.

He didn’t have time to waste, needing to change clothes before practice started. He didn’t want to wear his uniform to the ball fields. Both of the boys had baseball practice and he was the assistant coach for Jamie’s team, Ruby’s Reds. Theo would make sure Chris made it to his team practice. Chris played for the Gazette Sox. Not for the first time, Tony wondered how single parents got anything done and delivered each child to individual activities, too.

Once practice ended and the family was home again, they had a late dinner of tuna melt sandwiches and soup. The boys ate and ran. Enjoying the quiet, Tony filled Theo in on his day. When he mentioned the newspaper clipping and note, he gained her full attention.

“That’s just spooky.” Theo paused in the middle of cleaning the table. “Do you think it’s for real?”

“I hope it’s just a sick joke.” Tony guessed it wasn’t. He didn’t want to say more.

His concern grew as he watched Theo. She seemed so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice she left half of the table dirty when she dropped the rag in the sink and sat down. She looked pale as death.

Theo felt so queasy she couldn’t decide whether to throw up or faint first. Little black dots swirled in front of her eyes and she could hear an odd buzzing sound. It was loud enough to block out Tony’s voice.

The bones in the woods. She’d found them behind Nina’s house by accident. No one knew to whom they belonged. If they were from the time while Tony was away in the Navy or at Northwestern, he wouldn’t have known about them. Would anyone have told him about the strange things that happened here so many years ago?

Just before she would have toppled onto the floor, she felt his arms surround her. The nausea stopped as quickly as it started.

“I think you need to talk to Harvey.” She tilted her head back and met his eyes. Tony looked scared. Theo couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Are you okay?” He clutched her tighter.

Theo swallowed hard and nodded. “I just remembered hearing something terrible happened when you were off kissing the girls in every port.”

“What?”

“I think you were still in the Navy. Maybe you were already going to Northwestern.” Theo thought he wouldn’t have looked more confused if she had suddenly started speaking in Russian. “I’m not sure. I lived on campus and was wrapped up in school when my grandmother warned me about the ‘meanness in the world’ and said Harvey was dealing with it.” Theo felt cold and hot at the same time. “Can I have some water?”