Touch-Me-Not (14 page)

C
HAPTER
25

When the phone rang the next morning, Amelia was still asleep. Her daughter, Victoria supposed, was on West Coast time. She pushed her typewriter aside and answered. The caller was Myrna, her lawyer friend.

“Five women are here in my office, Victoria, apparently at your instigation.”

“From the knitting group, I assume.”

Myrna laughed. “Well, they’re all knitting up a storm at this very moment.”

“I’m glad they’ve gone to you.”

“I’m not sure how glad you’re going to be when you hear what they have to say. You need to be in on the discussion. Can you get here in the next half hour or so?”

Victoria checked her watch. “Yes, certainly. What’s the trouble?”

“I’d rather not talk on the phone. Would you like me to call a cab?”

“No, thank you.” Victoria thought of the blue dump truck. “I’ve got transportation.” After she hung up, she called Bill O’Malley’s cell-phone number. “Do you think you could give me a ride?”

“Sure thing, Mrs. T. Where do you want to go and how soon?”

“Myrna Luce’s again. As soon as possible.”

“Problems?”

“I don’t know,” said Victoria.

“Be there in ten minutes.”

Victoria shrugged into her coat and was searching for her baseball cap when Amelia came downstairs, hair combed, her clothing tidy. Was she actually wearing makeup? On the Vineyard? At nine o’clock in the morning? At times, her daughter seemed to have been spawned by a different set of parents.

Amelia reached out her arms and hugged her mother. “Good morning, darling. You look as though you’re ready to go out.”

“Good morning,” said Victoria. “The coffee’s on, and you know where the cereal is.”

Amelia strode into the kitchen, carrying herself regally, like a Trumbull, Victoria thought. Amelia turned when she reached the coffeemaker and smiled, a sunny smile that seemed to brighten the morning. “Where are you off to?”

“Vineyard Haven.” For some reason, Victoria didn’t want to be more specific.

“Is Howland Atherton giving you a ride?”

“Not this morning.” Victoria found her hat under the table, where McCavity must have knocked it.

“Oh?”

“Another friend is giving me a ride.”

Amelia poured herself a cup of coffee and took a sip. “You make the most superb coffee.” She held up her mug and smiled again.

“I shouldn’t be too long,” Victoria said.

“You don’t need to be so mysterious about your ride,” Amelia said. “Another handsome gentleman friend?”

“The toaster is in the cabinet under the kitchen counter,” said Victoria. “And there’s beach plum jam in the icebox.”

“Darling, you’re too much!” Amelia found the bread and the jam, and plugged in the toaster. Victoria, in the meantime, was settling her hat at a becoming angle.

“I love your chapeau, Mother. It looks cute on you,” said Amelia.

Her badge of authority. Her identity as a deputy police officer. Cute?

Victoria gave her daughter an airy wave and marched out to the west step to wait for O’Malley. She would love to see her daughter’s expression when the dump truck pulled up. Victoria could see Amelia’s reflection in the outside entry window. She could even make out her daughter’s concerned expression as she waited to see who would pick up her mother. Victoria heard the rumble of O’Malley’s truck, and could make out the dumbfounded look on Amelia’s reflected face as the truck braked and O’Malley emerged—young, handsome, vigorous, with longish curly black hair. His broad shoulders strained against his T-shirt. He hiked up his jeans and tightened his belt, then set down the milk-crate step for Victoria, and grinned broadly at her as she approached. He helped her up into the high seat.

Once seated, Victoria turned to Amelia, still standing by the window, mouth partly open, and lifted her hand in a regal wave.

“That was quick,” said Victoria as she settled her blue coat under her.

“I was at the airport,” he said. “Who was that?”

“My daughter Amelia. Elizabeth’s mother. She’s come to cart me off to an assisted-living facility.”

“What?” O’Malley looked at her in horror.

“I’m exaggerating. My daughter is one of those ‘caring’ people.”

“Ah. I understand.” O’Malley stopped at the end of the drive and looked both ways before turning onto the Edgartown Road. “What’s with Myrna?”

“I have no idea. She didn’t want to tell me over the phone.”

On the way to Vineyard Haven, the oak trees were haloed with a faint pink haze that softened their winter-stark branches.

“We always called new oak leaves ‘mouse ears,’ ” said Victoria. “When oaks leaf out, it’s time to plant corn. Oaks are always the last to recognize spring has come.”

She turned, about to say more, when O’Malley said, “How does your granddaughter like her job?”

“She’s busy. The harbor is getting ready for summer.”

“I took my boat around there the other day. Must have missed her.”

“Elizabeth has odd hours,” said Victoria, and suddenly realized, of course. It was spring. Sap was flowing. She glanced over at O’Malley. Such a nice man, right around Elizabeth’s age. Taller than her granddaughter, and in possession of a magnificent new dump truck. “Why don’t you come for supper tomorrow evening?”

“Great,” he said. “What time?”

His answer was so prompt, Victoria wondered why she hadn’t thought of him weeks earlier. “Elizabeth’s mathematical knitting group meets until seven every evening,” she said. “Do you mind a late supper? Seven-thirty or so?”

“Perfect. I usually eat around eight. Mathematical knitting?”

“They’re knitting Möbius-strip kelp and Klein-bottle sea anemones for a coral-reef quilt.”

O’Malley scratched his head and laughed. “I don’t need to worry about a topic of conversation. What can I bring?”

They discussed the logistics of supper until O’Malley turned off the main road and onto the lane where Myrna had her office.

“Give me a call when you’re ready to be picked up,” he said. “I’ve got business to attend to in Oak Bluffs, but it’ll take me only a few minutes to get here.”

He set out the milk crate again and helped Victoria climb down from the passenger seat.

“Thank you,” said Victoria, touching the visor of her baseball cap.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” he said.

Myrna flung the door open. “Come in.” She ushered Victoria into the office.

The five women knitters were sitting in a semicircle around Myrna’s desk—Jessica, Maron, Cherry, Alyssa, and Roberta.

“Hi, Mrs. Trumbull,” said Maron.

“Thanks for coming,” said Jessica.

“Glad you could get here,” said Roberta.

“We took your advice,” said Cherry.

“My advice?” Victoria settled herself into the chair Myrna held for her.

“To talk with Ms. Luce. We decided we needed legal help.”

Victoria removed her hat, placed it on Myrna’s desk, and waited.

The women looked at one another, then at Myrna.

“These women are convinced LeRoy Watts was the phone stalker,” Myrna said, waving a beringed hand at the five. “And, as you know, they set off to teach him a lesson.”

“I was there when they left to do so,” said Victoria.

“We didn’t find Mr. Watts,” said Cherry, who apparently spoke for the five. “We went to his shop, but it was closed and the shades were drawn. We didn’t want to go to his home, so we returned to the library, where we’d parked.”

“However,” Myrna went on, “each of the five decided, independently, according to them, to confront Mr. Watts. And now he’s dead.”

“Are you saying one of you killed him?” Victoria leaned forward.

Jessica set her knitting in her lap. “Yes. One of us did.” She pointed to herself. “I could be the killer, but I’m not saying, one way or the other.”

“None of us is talking,” said Maron. “I knew Mr. Watts from the time I was a little kid.” She set her knitting aside and took a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose. “He betrayed me. Us. All of us.” She wadded up the tissue in one hand and went back to her knitting.

“Sorry about all this knitting, but we’re working on deadline,” explained Jessica.

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Victoria.

“All of us trusted him,” said Cherry. “He went to my church, for heaven’s sake.” She jabbed a needle into her woolen coral.

Roberta sat forward on the edge of her chair. “It took awhile for me to believe Mr. Watts could be such a . . . such a . . .” she stopped. “I mean, he was involved in Scouts and sports, all kinds of community activity.” She looked down at her work. “Darn, I dropped a stitch.” The knitters waited until she’d retrieved it. “Everybody thought what a nice man he was. And here . . .”

“It’s the betrayal,” said Alyssa, smoothing her Möbius-strip kelp. “We all feel the same. We know for sure that one of us killed him. One of us stabbed him in the neck with a knitting needle.”

“We’re convinced whoever did it didn’t mean to kill him,” said Maron. “It wasn’t an intentional murder. She was probably just trying to make a point.”

The other four nodded in agreement.

“A knitting needle isn’t exactly a dangerous weapon,” said someone.

Jessica said, “We came to Myrna’s to ask her to defend us as a group. We don’t know which one of us did the deed, and we agreed that none of us would confess. We refuse to even try to identify the actual killer among us.”

“Not one of us is sorry he’s dead, although, of course, we didn’t set out to kill him,” said Roberta, continuing to knit while she looked around at the other women, who nodded. “I mean, we didn’t want to actually kill him, but we wouldn’t have minded if someone else did. So someone did, and it’s one of us.”

“That’s right,” said Maron, brushing bits of her disintegrated tissue off her multicolored brain coral onto the floor. “We’re, like, equally guilty. I mean, if you want someone dead and you hire a killer, you’re guilty, right?”

Victoria listened attentively, then turned to Myrna. “What do you think about this?”

“I called you, Victoria, because I can’t defend them. It’s both unethical and illegal.” Myrna shrugged, setting the beads in her dreadlocks in motion. “I can give them legal advice, but that’s it. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all innocent.”

“We’re all guilty,” said Roberta. “One for all, all for one. No question about it.”

Myrna held up a hand, its line of gold rings glittering with precious stones. She laughed and shook her head. “No, no. You’re innocent until proven guilty, and I can’t defend you.”

Victoria turned to the women. “Do I understand that not one of you knows which one did the deed?”

Knitting needles clicked.

“That’s right.”

“Yes.”

“We’re sticking together.”

“Have you considered,” said Victoria, “that it’s most likely that none of you is the killer?”

“Of course,” said Jessica. “We discussed the murder in general terms, so as not to point to one person. Every one of us had motive. None of us can account for every minute of our time from the evening we tried to talk to him until Maureen found his body, so we guess every one of us had opportunity,”

“And every one of us had the means.” Alyssa held up one of her steel needles.

Victoria turned to Myrna. “Speaking of advice, what do you think I can do for them?”

“I believe,” said Myrna, “they’d like you to be a character witness, if this should go to court.”

Five heads nodded.

“I can recommend five lawyers,” said Myrna.

“This won’t go to court,” said Victoria, getting to her feet. “May I use your phone?”

“Of course,” said Myrna. “Dial nine first.”

Except for the sounds of needles, the group was silent while Victoria called Bill O’Malley and asked for a ride home. When she hung up, they looked up quizzically.

“You just got here,” said Jessica.

“You haven’t even listened to us,” said Roberta.

“Will you . . . ?” asked Alyssa, holding her kelp under her chin, a brown-and-green beard.

“I’ve got to get busy,” Victoria said. “I intend to find the killer. And it’s not one of you.”

C
HAPTER
26

“That was short and sweet,” said Bill O’Malley when he picked Victoria up at Myrna’s law office.

“Five silly young women,” Victoria said as she adjusted her blue coat under her and fastened her seat belt. And she told him how each of the five was claiming to be the murderer of LeRoy Watts, the stalker. Bill listened attentively.

Before he pulled into Victoria’s drive, he stopped the truck. “Shall we give your daughter a thrill?”

“I’m not sure Amelia can deal with whatever you have in mind, but go ahead.”

He grinned, shifted into reverse, and backed into the drive, the insistent
beep, beep, beep
alerting everyone in the neighborhood, especially Amelia.

She appeared at the door looking concerned, a mixing spoon in her hand, a dish towel around her waist.

Victoria immediately felt bad. “I really shouldn’t tease her. She means well.”

“It’s time she learned you have a life of your own.” O’Malley backed up to the west door, shifted into neutral, pulled on the brake, and the backup alarm shut off.

Amelia put her hand to her throat.

O’Malley set out the milk-crate step for Victoria and offered her his arm, which she took and stepped down.

“Mother?” said Amelia.

Victoria released his arm. “Amelia, this is my friend Bill O’Malley.”

“Howdy, ma’am.” O’Malley, the Stanford graduate, was suddenly a good ole boy. He nudged the visor of his cap with a knuckle.

“Mother?” Amelia said again. Then she turned to O’Malley and said formally, “How do you do.” She glanced at her mother, then back at O’Malley. “Would you care to come in for a cup of tea?”

“Thank you, ma’am, but I got to be goin’.” O’Malley set the milk crate behind the passenger seat, slammed the door, went around to the driver’s side, shifted into gear, and the dump truck lumbered away from the house.

“Where on earth did you find
him
?” Amelia asked.

“He’s a longtime friend of mine.”

“A dump truck driver?”

“A dump truck
owner,
” replied Victoria. “He gives me a ride whenever I need one.”

“Oh, Mother! But where—?”

“Let’s have tea. Something smells good.”

“Gingerbread,” said Amelia. “I know how much you like it. But Mother . . . ?”

Victoria tossed her blue coat over the back of the captain’s chair by the door, went in to her usual spot at the cookroom table, and sat down.

Amelia carried two plates, two napkins, a knife, and the pan of fragrant gingerbread into the cookroom and cut into it. “How was your morning?” she asked, handing a plate to her mother. “You were so mysterious when you left.”

Victoria felt a pang of guilt. She really must try to understand Amelia’s concern and deal with it like an adult. “I wasn’t sure myself what I was getting into when I left,” she said. “Myrna Luce, my lawyer friend, asked me to come to her office because . . .” And then Victoria realized the story was too complicated to explain simply. “She told me it had something to do with the murder.”

“Mother, must you really . . .” Amelia didn’t finish. She sat down in the chair, at right angles to Victoria. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m being my usual busybody. I’ll try to control myself. Tell me about the work you’re doing.”

So Victoria did. She explained about the mathematical knitters and the global-warming quilt, about the breathing phone calls, the mysterious death of Jerry Sparks, the death of LeRoy Watts, and the five women who claimed to have killed him.

Amelia listened. She sipped her tea and nibbled her gingerbread, and when Victoria finished, she put her hand over her mother’s. “I love you, you know?”

And Victoria did know.

Victoria mashed up the last crumbs of her gingerbread with her fork tines, licked the fork clean, finished the rest of her tea, and pushed her plate and mug to one side.

“Thank you, Amelia. That hit the spot.”

Of one thing, Victoria was sure. None of the five women she’d met with at the lawyer’s office was capable of killing LeRoy Watts, even though each one of the five insisted on confessing to the murder. Since Myrna refused to represent them, either singly or as a group, Victoria felt it incumbent upon herself to clear the five of blame—in other words, to identify the murderer.

“Would you care for more tea, Mother?”

“No, thank you.”

Victoria knew the State Police were working to solve the murder of LeRoy Watts, but they had to wait for autopsy and forensic results, which might take weeks. They were also hamstrung by regulations and restrictions and bureaucracy. Even Casey, the town’s chief of police, had to move slowly through the tangle of rules, regulations, and people’s rights.

Amelia stood and gathered up the plates. “Your expression, I remember it from childhood. You’re determined to solve the murders, aren’t you?”

“I’m determined to help the authorities,” Victoria said with a smile. She fished an envelope out of the wastepaper basket, looked in the marmalade jar by the telephone for a pen that still had ink, and began her list.

“Your asparagus is up,” Amelia said. “My neighbor in San Francisco, Alvida Jones, gave me a delicious recipe for asparagus soup. Would you like that for supper?”

“Perfect,” said Victoria, thinking about her list of suspects rather than supper.

Amelia went out to the asparagus bed, and a short time later returned with a basket of the tender spears and busied herself in the kitchen.

First, Victoria wrote on her list, she’d need to talk with the person who knew LeRoy Watts best, and that was Sarah, his wife. She needed to visit the widow again to see how she was faring, and do that right away.

She’d have to talk to Sarah’s sister Jackie again. Sarah’s and Jackie’s feelings toward each other seemed to go beyond normal sibling rivalry into something quite nasty. Had Jackie trifled with her brother-in-law?

She added Jim Weiss to the list. She couldn’t begin to imagine how he must feel. His wife dead and his only daughter, sixteen years old, so humiliated. How difficult it was to be sixteen.

Then there were the several women she’d recognized in the shower videos. Someone needed to talk with them, and she would be the logical, least intimidating choice to do the interviews. She’d want to know how the women had reacted to that violation of their privacy.

Of course she’d talk to the five knitters who’d received the phone calls. All of them, Victoria, too, had assumed Jerry Sparks was the culprit until they’d found his body. Victoria shuddered at the remembered stench.

Going back to the death of Jerry Sparks. He was Emily Cameron’s first love, her first real man friend. She had every reason to believe LeRoy Watts had killed him. How would she have reacted? Victoria underlined her name on her list of people to interview.

There was Jerry’s landlady. Victoria had no reason to suspect Mrs. Rudge of murder, but she might provide some small clue, some inkling of what might have happened to Jerry.

She added to the bottom of her list, “How can we prove that Jerry Sparks was killed with LeRoy Watts’s Taser? Marks on his body? His clothing?”

Amelia came back from the kitchen, where she’d loaded the dishwasher. “How’s the list coming along?”

Victoria pushed her chair back and reached for the telephone. “I’ve got enough to get me started.”

Victoria dialed the police station, got a busy signal, and hung up. “Casey and I need to make another condolence call on the widow.”

“The poor woman,” said Amelia. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for your husband to be murdered, then find out he was spying on half the young women in town, and have two nine-year-olds to raise.” She wiped the tile counter with a damp cloth and hung it on the towel rack. “Think of how it must feel, trying to keep their daddy’s memory alive without letting them know what a louse he was.”

“I don’t envy her,” said Victoria. She got to her feet. “I haven’t been able to get through to Casey. It’s a lovely morning, so I think I’ll walk to the police station. Will you be all right while I’m gone?”

“I’ll be fine. Elizabeth left her car for me to use, and I thought I’d go into Edgartown to shop.” Amelia gathered up her purse and shrugged into her traveling jacket. “Let me give you a ride to the station house.”

“No, thanks. I can use the exercise.”

“Are you sure? It’s quite a long ways.”

“I enjoy the walk.”

After Amelia left, Victoria went to the basket of stale bread she kept next to the stove for the ducks that gathered around the station house. She emptied the bread into a paper bag, slipped on her blue coat, gathered up her cloth bag and lilac-wood walking stick, and hiked to the police station.

“It’s only a quarter of a mile,” she said out loud for no one at all to hear.

For weeks, whenever Victoria walked to the station, she’d watched the coming of spring. It had been unusually cool and long drawn out. First, the patch of old-fashioned double daffodils poked their pointed green shoots through the earth, produced fat buds, then burst into sunny bloom. The daffodils had escaped from Mabel Johnson’s garden years ago and established themselves by the side of the road. The flowers had faded, and now Victoria breathed in the scent of full-blown spring. Lilacs, apple blossoms, and new leaves. She walked briskly, keeping in mind someone had told her not long ago that she walked like a ten-year-old. Occasionally she’d stop to catch her breath, using, to herself, the excuse that she wanted to smell the new-mown grass, wafted to her great nose by a wandering breeze.

At the parking area in front of the police station, Victoria emptied stale bread out of her paper bag onto the grass. Ducks fluttered up from the Mill Pond as she shook out the last few crumbs, folded up the paper bag, and put it back into her cloth bag. Then she climbed the steps to the police station.

Casey looked up from her computer. “Morning, Victoria. What’s up?”

Victoria unbuttoned her coat and seated herself in the wooden armchair in front of Casey’s desk. “Since we last talked, has there been any progress on the LeRoy Watts murder case?”

Casey turned away from the computer to face her deputy. “It’s too soon. Do you have any thoughts?”

“Earlier today, Myrna Luce asked me to meet at her law office with the five women from the knitters’ group who’d formed a posse to go after Jerry Sparks.”

“Hoping to teach him a lesson. Yeah.” Casey picked up the beach-stone paperweight that held down her papers. She ran her hand over the sea-smoothed surface of the stone.

“But Jerry Sparks wasn’t the breather.”

“Nor did he make the shower-scene videos.” Casey straightened her papers and put the stone back on top. “I can’t believe all the paperwork we have to fill out for every little complaint. Kids throwing green apples at cars. Paperwork. Junior Norton told me his father used to take the kids out behind the police station and smack them one, and that took care of it. I can’t even yell at the kids.”

Victoria nodded sympathetically. “Each of the five women insists she killed LeRoy.”

“
What?
”

Victoria nodded.

“Where did you hear that?”

“They’d asked Myrna to represent them as a group.”

“That’s not legal.”

“That’s what Myrna said. She told them she’d be glad to give them advice, but because of ethical—and legal—considerations, she couldn’t represent them.”

“So then Myrna called you.” Casey smiled.

“Yes. Since I’d already spoken to Myrna before the five showed up at her office, she called me.”

Casey picked up the stone again and flipped it from one hand to the other.

“I don’t believe for an instant any one of them killed him.” Victoria stood up.

“Doesn’t seem likely, I must say. Have you checked their alibis?”

“I will. But I’d like to talk to LeRoy’s widow again.”

“The State Police have already questioned her.”

“We’re her neighbors. We ought to stop by and see how she is, ask if she needs anything, find out if her sister is still with her.”

Casey sighed, dropped the stone on top of her papers again, and stood up. “I need a break from the phone and this pesky paperwork, and it’s too nice a day to be indoors. Let’s go.”