Murder in the Past Tense (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) (14 page)

Several days later, Alec ambled over to the kitchen table at Chez Prentice, buttoned his sport coat, squared his shoulders, and placed his big hand on his burly chest, Napoleon-style. “Tell me, how do I look?”

I regarded Alec over the rim my ubiquitous cup of decaf. “Very nice, Alec. I’ve always liked you in that suit. Do you have
another
date with Lily?” I said the last sentence slowly and with meaning, sending a knowing glance his way.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes, only shook his shaggy head and took a seat. “Would that I did, m’dear. Nothing so pleasant, I assure you. I’m meeting with a board of directors on an important matter.”

Gil drained his cup of what he called high-test java. “Sounds serious.”

“Oh, aye, it is. These are the corporate people. They want to know about my progress before they advance me any further funds.” He stroked his spade-shaped beard nervously. “I’ve a feeling that they’re about to put an end to them.”

“Oh, dear! What would that mean? Would you have to stop hunting for the creature?” Alec had already lost all of his government grants, due to budget cutbacks, and now this.

“I don’t know, Amelia. Maybe, maybe not. It’s partly because of the Japanese, y’see.”

Gil frowned. “The Japanese?”

“It was a few years back. A scientific team from one of their finest universities came here. They had all the latest gear, boats, sonar, the lot. Charming fellows, really, and truly open minded, at first. They trolled the lake, end to end, and concluded that there’s something there, but it’s probably merely pike. Pike, I ask you! It’s brought up by the board every time we meet. So far I’ve managed to convince them that there’s far more to the story.”

“But if they say no, you could lose the
Sweet Afton!
”

Alec’s boat held a special place in my heart. It had been there when I needed it. But it was probably legally owned by the conglomerate that had been endowing his project all these years.

“Now, now, don’t be upsetting the bairn,” He looked significantly at my pregnant middle and patted my hand. “And don’t go borrowin’ trouble, Amelia, not at a time like this. I prefer to err on the optimistic side. The
Sweet Afton’s
mine. That is, mine and the bank’s.”

He spoke calmly, but the rolling r’s in his speech betrayed him. He was troubled.

Hester Swanson placed a cup and saucer before him. “I know you like a cup of tea. Let me get you some of that English Breakfast stuff you like.”

“Many thanks, but not now, dear lady. My appointment is at three.” He stood. “Just spare a wee prayer for me, would you?”

That reminded me. “Have you a hymn for today?” I asked gently. Alec had an astounding memory for hymns.

“‘Have Thine Own Way, Lord,’ ” he murmured with a faint smile.

With everyone’s good wishes echoing after him, he left the kitchen and we heard Chez Prentice’s big front door close.

Two hours later, Gil had repaired to the newspaper office. Young Serendipity Shea and I were going over her practice English Regents’ test when the front door at Chez Prentice opened and someone strode heavily through the foyer and into the dining room.

I looked up. “Vern!” I yelped involuntarily. The last time I’d seen Gil’s nephew—my nephew now—was when he’d snubbed us in the supermarket parking lot.

“Amelia and um . . . ” Vern waved vaguely at my student. He looked a little embarrassed as he dumped an armful of wadded-up quilted fabric on the opposite end of the dining room table. “I don’t need this now. I got some new stuff for my place.”

“I told you all the linens were yours to keep.”

I tried hard to hide the annoyance in my voice. Vern Thomas had lived in our spare bedroom at the lake house for several months until our falling out last winter. Apparently encounters with him were going to continue to be strained.

He shook his large, blond,
thick
head. He needed a haircut, but it wasn’t my problem, nor was it my place to point it out.

“Not that bedspread. Not my style. I thought maybe Marie and Etienne could use it in one of the guest rooms.”

I couldn’t help it. “Just what is your style? Early Chaos?”

I was remembering the way he’d maintained his room at our place. Vern was a brilliant graduate student but a total slob and had formerly been a good sport about my teasing. This time, however, I immediately regretted my crack. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, especially not now.

He drew himself up to his full, six-foot-three height. “I’ve been told I have a good eye for color,” he informed me stiffly. I could sense a trace of pride in his voice.

“And do you also have a good ear for Melody?”

Melody Branch was his current girlfriend. I suspected she was redecorating his place.

He blushed to the roots of his hair. There was the ghost of a smile, quickly followed by a disapproving scowl, but no answer to my jibe.

I decided to offer hospitality. “Look, Serry and I are just finishing up here. Time we all took a break. Why don’t you go into the kitchen and ask Hester if she has any more of Valerie’s famous lemon cookies?”

Vern shrugged. “Okay, but I can’t stay long.”

He exited with a nod to my student. He could always manage to be civil when food was involved.

Serendipity watched him leave. “That’s your nephew, huh?”

I sighed. “For better or for worse. He’s Gil’s late sister’s son.”

“Whatever.” She tucked a violet-streaked, blonde strand behind her ear. “I’ve seen him around town. He’s kind of cute.”

“We all think so,” I replied dryly, then turned my attention back to her test. “You’re doing much better on these, Serry. If you keep on studying like this, your classes this fall won’t be hard at all.” I gathered the study materials and began replacing them in my book bag. “Let’s adjourn to the kitchen for a snack.”

She shook her head. “Can’t. Daddy’ll be here any minute. We’re looking at cars. I’ll be sixteen next week, you know!”

She smiled for the first time since she’d arrived for the tutoring session. She hauled the strap of her hot pink backpack over one shoulder and stood.

“That guy Vern was right about this,” she said, fingering a corner the crumpled bedspread. “That pattern is gross.”

Everybody’s a critic
, I thought after I bid her farewell at the front door. Since the abrupt incarceration of her mother several months ago, Serry’s father had picked up the reins of parenthood and done much better that I’d expected, though he tended to continue spoiling her.

I was turning away from the door and making mental plans to donate the bedspread to the local charity shop when I spotted a dejected figure trudging up the front walk. It was Alec, and from the looks of him, the news was not good.

He brightened at the sight of me and allowed me to escort him to the kitchen, where he sat heavily. “Dear friends, t’was a debacle,” he announced.

Vern, who had risen from the big round kitchen table, about to leave, sat back down again. He shot me a quizzical glance.
What’s this all about?

“Alec’s research grants. The corporate ones.”

“They’re gone, done, finished.” Hester slid a cup of hot water and a teabag Alec’s way, and he accepted it with a nod of thanks.

“Gone? You mean
all
of them?” Apparently Vern’s grudge didn’t extend to the professor, I was glad to notice.

Alec’s hand shook as he dipped the teabag in the water. “All. Every blessed one. Times are truly hard. I can’t really blame them. I’m an expensive luxury, I suppose.”

“But you are still teaching, right?”

Alec ran a hand over his face and adjusted his shoulders. He took a deep breath.

“Right you are, Amelia! ’Tis the saving grace. I still have young minds to mold and a living to earn. Mustn’t let discouragement get the better of me. It’s a tool of the enemy, you know.”

He nodded sharply. It was what I’d always admired about this admittedly eccentric fellow. He was brave, in his own particular way.

“Yeah, but—”

As I had on other occasions, I kicked Vern gently under the table.

He glanced at me but said no more.

“I imagine this puts some of your plans on hold,” I said, looking at Alec significantly.

He understood what I meant. “Aye, it does, indeed.”

I could see a tear glistening in his eye. He blinked it away.

“Still, I’m glad to have my dear friends about me when I read this.” He pulled a long envelope from an inside pocket. “I retrieved it from my box over at the post office. It’s from a law firm. Who knows what fresh . . . cataclysm it signals?”

He spoke hesitantly, as though struggling for composure, before running his thumb under the envelope’s flap. He tore it open and extracted a two-page letter. Patting his pockets, he pulled out a pair of reading glasses and began to peruse the document, muttering to himself.

The rest of us tactfully engaged ourselves in other things. Hester put a refilled plate of lemon cookies on the table and took a seat, stirring a mug of coffee. Vern went to the refrigerator and topped off his glass of milk. Carefully waiting my turn at the fridge, I followed suit and poured some orange juice. When we had all finished the milling around, attention returned to Alec, who was still whispering to himself as he read the last page of the letter. “Yours respectfully, Benjamin Deeming, et al, Attorneys at Law.” He took off his glasses and looked around the table with a sad smile. “Oh my.”

Vern could stand it no longer. “What is it, Alec? Do you still have your boat?”

“For the time being, it seems. This was a different matter entirely.” Slowly, Alec refolded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. “It’s sad news, but not totally unexpected. An old friend of mine has died and left me a little something that he made for me. I should receive a package in the near future.”

We all made sympathetic murmurs. “Who was it?”

“His name was Jacob Rabideau, but we all called him Nimrod.”

Vern grimaced. “Nimrod? What kind of name is that?”

Alec smiled slightly. “It’s from the Bible. Nimrod was called a mighty hunter before the Lord. Jacob took the name for himself and was a little embarrassed when he learned later that in the Bible Nimrod wasn’t such a reputable character. But it was too late. The name stuck like glue.”

“How did you know him?” I asked. “Was he one of your students?”

Alec chuckled sadly. “No, it was rather the other way ’round. I was just a young fellow, a college student, working in the summer at the general store downstate at Dunn’s Vale. He came into town from time to time to trade. The owner of the store, Mr. Dunn, would trade supplies for wood carvings the old man made.” He tapped the letter with his finger. “Seems he left me some of his handiwork.”

“They must of been good carvings, then.”

I cringed inwardly, but I never corrected Hester’s grammar. It would
have
, not
of
, hurt her feelings.

“Oh, they were. Detailed and beautiful: animals, trees, flowers, all kinds of things. He was a hermit, kept to himself for the most part. He preferred to live alone in the woods, but he was by no means an uneducated man.”

Alec drained his cup of tea and dabbed at his moustache with a paper napkin. “We became friends. He had a nickname for me: Double Al, because of my name, y’see. Mr. Dunn and I would hunt down used books for him in various places, library discards, yard sales, and the like. All kinds of books: Shakespeare, novels, philosophy, Bible commentary. I looked forward to his visits because he’d discuss what he’d read with me. I was a student then and just lapped up the knowledge. I was seeking my place in the world, y’understand. And he helped me find it.”

“He did?” I peered eagerly through this tiny window into Alec’s mysterious past.

“Oh, aye, he surely did. You must remind me to tell you the details sometime.” He looked around at our eager faces. “Forgive me, friends, but I must be off. I have many things to do, packing up, such things as that.”

Vern rose. “Me too.” He looked down at Alec. “Sorry about your friend and, um, everything else.”

“I’m grateful for your company and your kindness.”

Vern walked out with him. I gathered my tutoring materials and headed for the office.

I was in a thoughtful mood as I finished loading the dishwasher at home the next day, thinking about that long-ago summer.

It’s strange,
I thought,
but sometimes when you come across a particular subject, it will start springing up again and again.

So it was with Jamison’s Adirondack Summer Theatre. First Danny’s picture in the tabloid and reminiscing with Gil, then that computer session with Lily, and, of course, Dierdre’s party for Terence at Chez Prentice, of all places. It wasn’t a very important subject, really, but I found that thinking back over those times took my mind off my swollen ankles, heartburn, and all those restroom visits, as well as Alec’s unfortunate news.

A knock on the door interrupted my reverie.

It was Alec himself. Without any preliminary pleasantries, he walked in and plunked a cardboard carton down on the coffee table.

“I’ve an appointment at my lawyer’s about the
Sweet Afton
shortly, but I had to stop by and show you what the UPS man brought me today. It’s from Nimrod’s lawyer. Look!”

He pulled open the tabs. Atop a snow bank of Styrofoam peanuts sat a package swathed in great quantities of bubble wrap. Alec unrolled and unrolled until he revealed a brown wooden rectangle a little smaller than a cigar box.

“Look! He made this. For me! Dear old fellow carved this himself!” He handed it over.

I sat on the sofa and turned the box to examine all the sides. “Alec, it’s wonderful! All the little animals and plants. Look, there’s a fawn, and a raccoon! What a wonderful gift.” I handed it back.

“Here’s my initials.” He turned it around and traced the initials AAA carved into the top. I could almost hear the lump in his throat. “That’s how I know he did it for me.”

“A is your middle initial? I don’t think I ever heard your middle name.”

He chuckled. “Well, it doesn’t stand for Automobile, as some might think. It’s for Artair, a form of Arthur. Means bear, I believe. That’s what my mother always told me.”

I waited for more information about his mother, but none came.

“Look,” I said, pointing again. “Those are bears right there.” The initials were framed by two standing bears, forming parentheses around the letters.

Alec squinted at the carving. “Why, so they are!” He shook his head, pulled out a large handkerchief and blew his nose. “Oh my. Oh my. The dear old fellow.”

I asked the obvious. “What’s inside?”

He blinked rapidly. “Why, you know, I was so taken with the box itself, I never got around to looking. Let’s see.” A small leather loop, fastened to a tiny knob, held the thick top closed.

Inside was a well-worn leather-bound book, bearing the embossed word
Journal
on the cover.

“He probably made the box to fit this book!”

“I believe you’re right, Amelia. The dear old fellow.” He gently pried the book out of the box and opened it. “Ah, yes, this is what I hoped it was; not very valuable, per se, but a treasure to me.” He turned the first page gently. “Listen to this: ‘I began my adventure a month ago, and I have decided make note of it in this book so people in the future will know how to live in the woods.’ ”

“How fascinating! May I look at it?”

Alec handed the book to me and I turned the pages carefully. Nimrod Rabideau had written with a slanted and loopy hand that took some concentration to read. Some of the entries were several pages long, some were just a few lines.

Clearly, he hadn’t written in it every day. There were year-long gaps here and there, but every page of the book was covered with writing.

“Alec,” I said, turning back to the last few pages, “this goes back more than forty years. Here’s a page labeled Recipes. ‘For rabbit stew: One large rabbit, skinned and cut up. Save entrails.’ ” I shuddered. “He really did live off the land, didn’t he?”

“Aye.” Alec smiled gently. “He once said he would give me a recipe for pickled beaver tail, but I’m fairly sure it was a joke.” He took the book back and closed it with a kind of reverence. “He could be a humorous old gent sometimes.” He ran a finger under one eye and turned away for a few seconds. “As soon as I get all this rigmarole straightened out, I’ll take the time to sit down and read it straight through.”

“You promised to tell me how Nimrod helped you find yourself.”

“Oh, yes. It’ll take a few minutes. Could we sit?”

We sat.

“I may’ve told ye,” Alec said as he settled back into the sofa across from me, “that I spent a number of years at Dunn’s Vale, y’know, downstate, working at a general store.” He sighed. “It’s gone now, of course.”

He hadn’t told me anything about his early life, but I didn’t want to interrupt the stream of thought, so I just said, “Go on.”

The box balanced on one knee, he stroked the carvings with his fingers as he spoke. “I was between degrees, y’might say. I’d completed my bachelor’s in English literature, but I was still at loose ends—”

“Literature?” I blurted. “I always thought you were more of a science major.”

“Well, no, not truly. M’heart is still in stories and poems and the hymns, of course. I got my hymn habit from him, too, you know?”

I shook my head.

He laughed. “Oh, yes, Nimrod had a fine voice, and it carried, let me tell you. The hymns would float on the wind from the woods at night.”

“I suppose some people complained.”

“Well, there were a few dust-ups on the subject, though he was a true tenor, with an excellent sense of pitch. It’s not like he was caterwauling. His favorite was ‘A Mighty Fortress.’ I can still almost hear him: ‘A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.’ ” Alec also had a fine voice. “Of course, the saw-playing didn’t help.”

“Saw playing?” I laughed at the ludicrous mental picture.

“Oh yes. He’d taken it up right before I met him. He ordered the whole kit and caboodle—a saw, a bow, and a music book—from a catalog and taught himself. I must admit, it was a little, well, shrill when he played it. And the sound did carry a long way, poor fellow.”

For a moment, Alec was lost in his thoughts. He looked up and said, “He was a godly man too. Knew his Bible front to back.”

“How old was he?”

He scratched his head. “I’m not sure. He’d been in the woods more than thirty years when I met him, he told me, so I expect he was in his nineties, at least, when he died.”

I remembered another question. “So why did you change from English to science?”

“Oh, yes, therein lies the nubbin of the story, Amelia. He’s the one who told me about the creature in Lake Champlain!”

“Really! And you were intrigued?”

“Of course! To meet a real eyewitness—”

“Wait! Eyewitness? Did he claim to have actually seen this creature?”

Alec smiled and nodded. “He came to the store the day after, and he was still shaken up. He’d lost his fishing rod to the animal—”

“He what?” I squeaked. “Was he fishing for the thing?”

Alec chuckled. “No, of course not. He told me that’s how he lost the rod. The thing jerked it right of his hand.”

“And you believed his story.”

Alec’s broad, hairy face took on an earnest expression. “Oh yes. He was the most honest man I ever knew. He liked to quote the Bible: ‘God hates a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.’ ”

For some reason, the image of Danny DiNicco’s bloodstained desk popped randomly into my mind.
Innocent blood? Was Danny an innocent, or was he involved in something nefarious that destroyed him in the end?
Had he, himself, shed innocent blood?

I blinked to clear my mind of the thought. “Are you going to Nimrod’s funeral? I mean, is there going to be one?”

“No. He requested to be buried with his family members. His lawyer told me Nimrod’s father owned a farm a little west of here, and there’s a small family cemetery. It’s been preserved, fenced off and all, but it’s in the middle of a housing development now. The lawyer will have to get permission to have him buried there. It doesn’t appear that he left enough funds to pay for a casket, but I’m not going to let him go without. I’ve a little put by, and if the family plot isn’t available, we’ll find another place to put him to rest.”

I smiled at him. “You’re a good man, Alec.”

“He was good to me. I owe him.” He sighed. “And I’d be grateful if you’d explain that to your friend, Miss Lily. She doesn’t understand my attachment to the old chap.”

“I’ll try. He was your mentor, Alec. A father figure.”

“That he was, m’dear.”

I broached the subject we had been avoiding. “So the proposal plans are off, I take it?”

He looked at me sadly. “I couldn’t possibly ask a woman like Lily to marry a pauper like m’self under such circumstances. The withdrawal of corporate funds put the last nail i’ the coffin of that vain dream.”

“It’s shouldn’t matter, Alec. You love her.”

“So I do. And you’re right, it shouldn’t matter, but it does.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

He shot out his sleeve and glanced at his watch. “I have that lawyer’s appointment directly.” He began to wrap up the box in the bubble wrap.

“Don’t you want to put the journal inside?”

“Will ye hold onto it for the time being? I know you’ll take good care of it, and it might amuse ye while ye wait for the babe to arrive, so to speak.”

What with my tutoring work and various B&B duties, I was hardly lying around munching bonbons all the livelong day, but Alec seemed to have forgotten that. We headed down the hall to the front door.

“I’ll be glad to keep the book for you, Alec. Thank you for trusting me with it.”

I was honored that Alec would let me examine his treasure, but I wasn’t looking forward to trying to read it. Nimrod’s spidery handwriting would be a real challenge to anybody.

“I’m obliged to ye. It’ll gie me an excuse to visit as well.” Alec gave me a gruff hug with his free arm.

“You know you don’t need one. Come back any time.”

He gave me a melancholy smile and a wave as he drove away.

I closed the door and returned to what passed for a living room in our little lake house. I picked up the journal with the idea of placing it safely in our overstuffed bookcase, but the leather cover slipped from my grasp and the book fell on its back, open to a densely-written page. As I stooped to pick it up, I spotted a curious word among all the curlicues: “Behemoth.”

“What on earth?”

Leaving the lunch dishes to soak in the sink, I sat on the sofa and began the arduous, eye-stinging job of reading Nimrod’s words.