Olive and Let Die (22 page)

I debated how much to tell Dolly and decided the less she knew, the better. “I thought you could go through and sort the rest of Doreen's clothes for me, then wash them and take them out to the Salvation Army in Watertown. Also the bedding, dishes, and pots and pans. Of course, keep anything you want, or if you know someone who needs this stuff, go ahead and take it for them. Leave the red stand mixer,” I added.

I directed her toward the bedroom, and she got right to work. “I'll be upstairs.”

The upstairs was full. Four bedrooms' worth of full. And dusty. It was clear Doreen, and probably my grandparents before her, had never lived up here, just continued to add to the piles with items they might someday need.

Problem was, I didn't know what I was looking for. My gut feeling told me it would be paper of some kind. Perhaps a copy of the Bloodworth Trust documents? That would explain so much, but it seemed unlikely.

There were a number of boxes lined up along the wall in the hallway. That seemed as good a place to start as any. As I pawed systematically through them, I was gratified to see that most of them were empty. The box for the coffeemaker. A ceramic hair-straightening device. The box and instructions for the expensive stand mixer. How had she afforded it? Those things cost several hundred dollars. Well, perhaps she had won it at Bingo or bought it on installments at QVC.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone and opened the two-foot-by-two-foot window that looked out on the driveway, the road, and the overgrown field beyond. The window stuck as though it hadn't been opened in years, which was almost certainly the case, but after giving it a little muscle, I raised it. I tossed the empty boxes out into the yard. Doreen had a fifty-five-gallon oil drum out back that she probably used for burning. Not very environmentally conscious, but this was a big job.

Other boxes contained clothes of varying sizes. Doreen had been a Rubenesque woman. I wondered if these were her skinny clothes. Or her fat clothes. Or some combination thereof. They seemed to be of fairly recent vintage, so I assumed they had not belonged to my grandmother, who'd been gone for decades. I gave the boxes a quick going-through then set them aside to add to Dolly's hoard.

A cool breeze fluttered in through the small window, blowing dust around. I sneezed, three times in rapid succession, then headed for the first bedroom. The room was small, containing two twin beds with brown metal frames and a small dresser in between them. The old-fashioned floral wallpaper had peeled away in a couple of spots, revealing another layer underneath. This room seemed to be full of old linens. Musty sheets and pillowcases, a couple of old quilts made from charming feed sack fabrics, probably dating to the nineteen thirties. They appeared to be intact, though I saw some rusty-looking stains. Perhaps they could be cleaned. I set them aside.

The dresser drawers revealed nothing. There did not appear to be a closet, which I guess was normal in an old
farmhouse like this. I checked under the mattresses and under the beds. Nope.

When I opened the second bedroom door, my spirits soared, then sank even lower. The room was full of paper. Books, boxes, and loose papers covered the double bed and the small table in between them. And yet paper was what I thought I was looking for. I fanned quickly through old farm records. Receipts for milk pickup. Records of gallons produced by each cow. Breeding documentation.

My eyes fell on an old-fashioned scrapbook, the kind with two hard covers held together by a string tied with a bow. I didn't really have time for a trip down non–memory lane, but I was curious. Were there photos of my bitter, angry grandparents in here? I wondered why they were so bitter. Farming was a difficult life, no question, and their only daughter had disappointed them. But according to Melanie, they'd been disagreeable even when she was a child.

I flipped through the pages. Melanie's report cards from elementary school. She'd done well in reading and social studies, not so well in math. So we had that much in common. Her school pictures were placed inside glued-on corner tabs. She looked happy enough in her pigtails and Peter Pan–collared blouse. And I could see the resemblance to my own daughter. Teeny, tiny twinge of nostalgia. I missed Cal so much.

The next few pages were newspaper clippings, yellowed and brittle. Wedding and anniversary notices from the
Bay Blurb
for people I'd never heard of were pasted onto the pages. Each clipping had a date, presumably the date the announcement had appeared in the paper, written in fading ink in a flowery hand. My grandmother's?

My hand stilled. The next clipping was an obituary with an accompanying photo. I stared.
Herman “Monty” Montgomery, age sixty-seven, dies at home.
Underneath the caption was a photo of Monty, one I recognized from the photos hanging on the wall in the artifact room at Gladys's house. He looked young and handsome with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a pre-Indiana-Jones-style fedora pushed back on his head.

Herman Montgomery, age sixty-seven, long-time resident of Bonaparte Bay, died at home with his wife at his side on February 23rd. Montgomery owned and operated several marinas along the St. Lawrence, and was a silent partner in many local businesses.

Once she sold the businesses, Gladys would have been quite well off, which explained her ability to maintain both the river house and a condo in Florida.

He was the son of Gerald and Melvina (Bloodworth) Montgomery, both of this town, who died many years ago. Montgomery was the last surviving grandchild of Elihu Bloodworth, who was at one time the richest man in the North Country. Arrangements are with the Miller Funeral Home.

I sat back on the bed, causing a small cloud of dust particles to rise into the air. Monty had been a self-made man, Gladys had said. Why had none of the Bloodworth wealth trickled down to him, though? Or through my grandmother, for that matter? It appeared she'd never had it easy. There
could be any number of reasons, all of them speculation at this point.

My eyes returned to the clipping. The written-in date was February 25. Twenty years ago, the date the notice had appeared in the paper. And written underneath was a second date: February 23 . . . of next year.

This date was in the future, just a few months from now.

I did a quick calculation, my math skills being adequate for the job. Twenty-one years from the date of Monty's death.

What was it Doreen had been telling people?
The time is almost up.
I wished I could have seen the Bloodworth Trust documents, which would probably have confirmed my thoughts. From the attorney's letter, I knew the trust was about to expire and I would bet that date was February 23 of next year. “Just how much money are we talking about?” I mused out loud.

But this just confirmed what I already knew. The unanswered question was what, if anything, that arrowhead had to do with this puzzle. After an hour's worth of work, I was no closer to solving it.

I jumped at the sound of a sharp whistle. “Georgie,” Dolly called from the bottom of the stairs. “Come take a break. There's no cream for coffee, so I made tea. She had orange spice in a box on the table.”

I must have missed that when I cleaned out the food, when? Was it just yesterday?

“Be right down.”

I squirted some dish soap on my hands and gave them a good scrub before sitting at the table. Dolly was dunking her tea bag up and down in the china mug.

“This ain't too bad,” she said, slipping into the sometimes sloppy speech patterns of the North Country. “If you want, Tuesday I'll borrow Harold's truck and we can start loading up the big stuff.” She slurped up some tea. “Unless you want to have a garage sale or something with the furniture?”

“Can Harold get along without the truck for the day?” Dolly's second husband worked a civilian job at Fort Drum. I wasn't quite sure what he did, come to think of it.

“Yeah, he can take my Ford. I can round up some muscle for us too.”

Muscle. I thought of Channing, naughty girl that I was. “Oh. I should get somebody to winterize the house. Melanie has to decide what she's going to do with this place, but we could get a hard freeze anytime. Don't want to be dealing with burst pipes.”

“Harold's putting in overtime at the base until we leave for Branson, or I'd have him come out and do it.” Dolly did some more dunking, then placed her soggy tea bag on a small saucer.

“That's okay. I'll hire a handyman.” Might as well give Liza's boyfriend some work. “Have you ever heard the name ‘Bloodworth'?” Dolly had lived in Bonaparte Bay her entire life. Couldn't hurt to ask.

She pursed up her bright pink lips and shook her head. “No, can't say that I have. How come?”

“Oh, no reason. I just came across it recently and thought it was an unusual name.” Back at my office, I'd run a quick search and hadn't come up with anyone in the Jefferson County area who still bore the name. And poor Elihu. Apparently famous—or at least very, very rich—in his time, today he didn't even have a Wikipedia page about him.

I changed the subject. “Where'd you find the tea? I thought I'd cleaned out all the food. Did I miss a cupboard?”

“Doreen must have liked her tea at Bingo. She kept some in her Bingo box.” Dolly indicated the needlepoint plastic canvas box on the table. I'd meant to take that with me yesterday and see if Paloma or any of Doreen's other buddies wanted it.

I pulled the box toward me. “We may as well keep the bags here at the house, along with the kettle. It's going to be a lot of work cleaning this place out and we may want it.”

The lid lifted off easily since there was no latch. Inside were half a dozen orange spice tea bags, which I retrieved and stacked on the table. “I guess these will be all right. The mice won't bother them with the house being unoccupied, will they?” Even though the bags were wrapped in a coated paper, a strong scent of orange rind and clove wafted up. It reminded me of Christmas.

“Nah, they won't like the smell.”

I dumped the contents of the box onto the table. Two tokens for free drinks at the Legion, which I passed to Dolly. She and Harold could use them, whereas I—or Melanie—never would. Two fat Bingo daubers. I shook each one and was rewarded with the sound of sloshing ink. Paloma would want these. A single Bingo card lay on the bottom of the box. The B and the I were scribbled out. The number 68 was circled with a purple gel pen, not daubed, in the O column. I picked up the box to replace the items and felt something shift inside it. Huh?

The box was empty. And yet something was definitely inside it.

My cell phone rang. The charge nurse was calling. Melanie was awake and asking for me.

I stowed the box under my arm. There had to be an explanation but figuring it out would have to wait till later. “Let's head home, Dolly. You want to take the clothes now or come back for them?”

“I still haven't checked all the pockets for stray cash. Why don't we come back next week? It'll give you and your mom a chance to decide what you're going to do with this place. We should be able to sort through everything in a few days. There's no rush, right?”

Dolly was right. There was no rush.

We drove back to the Bay with the music turned up loud. Fine with me because I didn't really want to talk. Dolly offered to empty my trunk and deliver the food to the Methodist Church Food Pantry on her way to work tomorrow. I took her up on it.

I went into my office and pulled out a pad of paper and an “I Heart 1000 Islands” pen that some customer had left on a table.

Melanie had made me wait a long time for her. She could wait a little longer for me.

I started doodling, letting my thoughts wander.
Doreen
. I drew a circle around the name.
Spencer.
Another circle.
Bloodworth Trust. Arrowhead.
I continued till I had pretty much covered the paper with my bubbles.

Melanie and Caitlyn had come back into town and visited Doreen the day before she was killed.

According to the tabloids, Melanie was in financial trouble. That might or might not be true, but what was certain was that she stood to inherit not only the farm she'd grown up on, but Doreen's share of the Bloodworth Trust, which
was about to be distributed. That gave her a pretty good motive for murdering Doreen. Except she herself had been shot by an unknown assailant. What if Melanie killed Doreen, then somebody else who'd gotten a letter from MacNamara and MacNamara, attorneys at law, had tried to kill her to increase his or her share?

Caitlyn was sneaking and snooping around and doing some kind of research. Melanie had apparently sworn her to secrecy and she was getting paid to be loyal. Yet it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that Melanie had provided for Caitlyn in the event of her death. Melanie had told me that she'd recently written a will with my daughter Cal as the beneficiary. That didn't mean she hadn't left something to Caitlyn. But would it have been enough to kill for?

And what about Spencer Kane? He'd said he had something important to talk to me about, and he'd been doing some research of his own. But before he could tell me, he was bludgeoned to death in the yard behind the funeral home. Could I get a look at his notes, see what he'd been working on? My guess was no. The police would almost certainly be examining the notes as evidence in their search to find the killer. One thing I did know: Spencer had been looking into the history of the Bay.

And I was willing to bet he was researching the Bloodworths. Everything seemed to revolve around the trust. Not for the first time I wondered just how much it was worth.

Inky had been framed, and rather clumsily so. As far as I knew, he had no connection to Melanie or Spencer or Gladys and her husband or the Bloodworths. My guess was that someone had taken advantage of the fact that Spinky's
was undergoing renovations and had used that opportunity to pick a convenient target. It could just as easily have been Spiro who was arrested.