A Most Curious Murder (10 page)

“I knew Aaron was a recluse, but still, you’d think, even if they didn’t get along, that he’d want to be here,” Jenny said.

Dora hitched her shoulders. “That’s what everybody’s saying. He was always the sweetest of the two boys. Far back as I remember, Adam would insult people, and Aaron would hurry in to smooth things over. Oh, and before I forget, Priscilla Manus is looking for you. She was so excited when I told her you were back in town.”

Jenny frowned. “Isn’t she the one who wrote the history of Bear Falls? I’m not a historian.”

Dora nodded, then looked over Jenny’s shoulder to welcome Priscilla, who walked up from behind.

“Why, it’s Jenny Weston!” Priscilla chirped. The long, thin woman with frizzy blonde hair, dressed in a chic little black dress with a short-sleeved jacket tipped her head to greet Jenny, avid bird’s eyes flashing that she was on a mission. “I just heard you were back in town. You’ve lived in Chicago for such a long time. Are you here just visiting? Or will you be staying for a while?”

“Oh, for a while, I’d say.”

Priscilla clapped her hands together. “My goodness! Can I count on you to help with updating our town history? I’ve tried to get your neighbor involved, but she’s rather coy. All I need is a little of your time. I heard you were in law, so you’d probably be good at this kind of thing.”

“Paralegal,” Jenny said. “In my husband’s firm.”

“Well, well, well.” Priscilla turned her eyes up a few watts. “I hope we get to meet the man someday soon. I imagine he’ll be around. I mean, with you staying.”

“He will,” Jenny lied happily. “When he gets back from Guatemala. Very busy, you know.”

“My goodness! Guatemala, you say. Must be an important man.”

Jenny smirked as her mother moved her away, apologizing to Priscilla for being in such a hurry.

“It wouldn’t take much of your time,” Priscilla called after Jenny. “I’d love to have your name in as one of the contributors. A way to honor your poor father, I would say.”

Jenny felt her face tighten and settle into a scowl she hoped would keep others away.

Dora, following through the crowd, said, “That’s not a bad idea, Jenny. What Priscilla mentioned. You need something other than murder and a ruined library to keep you busy. And that’s all you’ve had since you got home. ‘Busy hands make for busy minds,’ you know.”

Jenny wanted to snap at her mother; her mind was already busier than it should be. Let Lisa do it. Lisa the Good would know how to handle situations without getting mad at everybody. That was something Jenny had promised herself to mend even before coming home to Bear Falls: her temper. Not that it was a truly bad temper. Not that she was ever the one really at fault . . .

***

Zoe sat in the backseat of Jenny’s car with the doors and windows open to catch what breeze there was. She stood as soon as the three of them walked up, leaning between the seats.

“First thing we’ve got to do is talk to Aaron Cane,” she said, words tumbling over each other. Jenny noticed tears in her eyes.

“Sure, Zoe. We’ll go.” She wracked her brain for something to distract Zoe. Thinking “Alice,” she said, “But, oh dear, ‘Which road do I take?’”

Zoe stopped a minute, then returned, “‘Where do you want to go?’”

Jenny frowned. “No idea. I forgot the rest.”

Zoe clapped her hands. “You’ve been hiding your light under a bushel.”

“I’ve been studying. Soon I’ll quote you into oblivion.”

Zoe frowned. “The battle is on, Jenny Weston.”

“Doubt it will be much of a battle. The inside of your head is a muddy swamp of quotes without context. Mine is much more scholarly.”

Zoe sniffed. “‘The lotus flower grows in a muddy swamp.’”

“Is that from
Alice in Wonderland
?”

“Not at all. Not at all. But I’ll leave you to find where it came from, since you think yourself so scholarly.”

Jenny thought hard for another quip to squash her, but Tony interrupted their fun.

“You sure you want to go see Aaron Cane?” He bent toward Zoe.

Down came Zoe with a silent thud. “I can’t come up with anything else.”

“You think there’s something in it for him? I mean, out of his brother’s death? Like maybe inheriting Adam’s house or money Adam wrangled out of his sister? I never met the man, but I’ve seen him around town. Not as much a hermit as people say.”

“You’ll come, won’t you?” Zoe screwed her head around to give Tony a one-eyed stare. “We need your help. You’ve got experience in—”

“Help as much as I can.”

“Does anyone know where he lives?”

“I have the address.” Dora, standing quietly behind the others, dug into her pocketbook. “I wanted to send him a sympathy card, you know. They were brothers, after all.”

“Then we can go.” Zoe took the paper with Aaron’s name and address on it.

Dora left to go home and make a casserole to take to Abigail.

Jenny, Tony, and Zoe were on their way, following the sweet voice of Jenny’s GPS as they drove south along the Lake Michigan shore.

After all the brown of the funeral home, Jenny welcomed the green hills along the lake.

“Don’t worry what Ed Warren said about not leaving town, Zoe,” Tony said from the backseat. “That’s standard procedure. It’s early days in the investigation, and Ed doesn’t want people disappearing as facts unfold.”

Zoe smiled, peeking back between the seats. “Think he’d tell you what he’s found so far? I mean, detective to detective? He sure won’t tell me anything. He had a shoe print on one of the books and checked out my shoes. Mine were much too small. You’d think that would clear me.”

He shook his head. “Maybe of the Little Library business, but not Adam’s murder.”

He looked over at Jenny. “Got any thoughts?”

“There’ll be other shoes to look at.”

“Don’t you think the same person committed both crimes?” Zoe asked. “What about the note they found in Adam’s house? Supposed to be from me, asking him to come over to my yard right around dawn.” She made a disgusted sound. “I never wrote him such a note. I never would and never did.”

“What about that hatchet you found?” he asked Jenny.

“Buried in his yard. Not long ago,” Jenny said as she checked her speed. She was going too fast—maybe from the joy of being free of the town. “The grass over it wasn’t even wilted, though the roots were all cut.”

“Think it was used on the library?”

“Who knows? Nothing made it seem that way,” she said.

“Could Abigail have anything to do with this?” Zoe asked.

Jenny shook her head. “Doesn’t seem her style, breaking up a library with an axe in the middle of the night. Then killing her brother the next night? I don’t think Abigail’s a Carrie Nation, fighting against books. And certainly not a Lizzie Borden.”

Tony gave a low chuckle. “I’ve worked stranger cases. You’d be surprised what people do to each other and who those people are. One case in Detroit, a lawyer set up a hit on another lawyer. The other lawyer hired the same hit man, at the same time, to kill the first one. The hit man was so confused, he came into the precinct and ratted them both out.” He shook his head. “Another time, a grandmother didn’t like the way her grandchildren were being raised, went over to their house, and poisoned the children’s mother and father so she could raise the kids herself.” He shook his head. “People can be beyond strange. All the way to evil. I quit being surprised by anybody a long time ago.”

The three stopped talking and watched as they drove by the quiet lake. Summer people’s mansions stuck out like sore thumbs here and there, built along the sandy shore: grassy lawns and gates and architecture so wrong for a Midwest coastline. Once beyond the houses, the lake opened wider, a few fishing boats bobbed on sudden swells, and sails dotted the horizon as small white caps fell over each other, hitting the now-rocky shoreline. A beautiful day.
Not a day for sadness and murder
, Jenny thought, then wondered where all of this fit into her life.

She’d come home to be healed.

Behind her, Tony stared out the window and intoned with exaggerated depth: “By the shores of Gitche Gumee, / By the shining Big-Sea-Water, / At the doorway of his wigwam, / In the pleasant Summer morning, / Hiawatha stood and waited.”

He leaned back, arms behind his head. “I love that poem.”

“That’s Lake Superior,” Zoe corrected. “Up by the Pictured Rocks. Not around here.”

“So what? Water’s water. Still a great poem.”

“You think Longfellow was ever in Michigan?” Zoe went on, but the other two ignored her as the GPS warned that their turn was just ahead on the left.

The cottages along here were hidden back among the trees. Most were shacks at the end of overgrown two-tracks. At the head of one of the driveways stood a crooked sign with “Cane” painted in red on a weathered board.

Jenny turned up the weedy road.

She navigated through the scrub and potholes. In places, deep sand threatened to swallow her wheels. Eventually, she pulled into an open clearing, where a small, wooden house stood, all doors and windows closed.

They got out. Nothing moved but tall daisies and grasses bowing in the syrupy breeze. To one side of the house, an ancient truck with broken windows leaned; on the other sat a dusty car about as old.

“Certainly is quiet,” Zoe said looking around. She shivered despite the thick sun.

A robin called from the safety of a tall maple at the edge of the woods, bees and wasps hummed among the weeds—all contented summer sounds. But nothing from the house. The unpainted front door stayed closed, curtains pulled over the glass.
If anyone was inside, he or she hadn’t heard the car or weren’t interested in company.

“What’s your nose say?” Jenny leaned down close to tease.

Zoe stared at her with narrowed eyes. “It says you need a shower.”

“Fraud. You—”

“Did you hear that?” Zoe interrupted, eyes wide, a finger next to her nose.

Jenny shook her head, nervous at the dilapidated state of the house and how much she felt like a trespasser.

Tony stopped to listen. “You mean that barking?”

“It’s a dog,” Zoe said, her mouth hanging open. “A lot of yipping . . .”

Her head tipped to one side. She scanned the woods in one direction, then another, a hand up to her ear.

Jenny held still to listen.

“A neighbor’s dog,” Jenny said. “Everybody keeps a dog this far out.”

Zoe sighed. “You’re right. How could it be Fida?”

Jenny knocked at the front door: once, twice, then harder.

Nothing.

And then a dog barked again. And something thumped against the door on the inside, as if being thrown.

Zoe stepped up and tried the doorknob. It didn’t turn. “Fida!” She pressed her nose to the door glass, covered by a faded curtain.

“He’s probably got a dog.” Jenny read Zoe’s face. “Living out here, all alone. I imagine a dog would be the first thing you’d get. It’s inside. A watchdog.”

Tony reached around Jenny and knocked harder. There was frantic barking now, and not the deep woof-woofing of a large animal.

“We know Aaron didn’t go into town for the funeral. But you’d think he would have stayed home. At least that much to mark his brother’s passing.” He looked around the clearing. “But neither of those vehicles have been anywhere in a while.”

Tony walked over to a window on the side of the house. He cupped his hands around his eyes and looked in. When he turned back to the women, he seemed confused.

“Somebody’s in there. He’s sitting in a chair. Far as I can see, he’s ignoring us.”

He knocked at the glass, then hollered, “Hey, Mr. Cane. We’d like to talk to you a minute about your brother.”

More barking.

Tony shook his head. “Not moving.”

“Let me see,” Zoe said, elbowing Tony from the window and then standing on tiptoe to see in. “Something’s moving in there, all right. And it’s not the man in the chair. Too dark to make out, but I saw movement across the floor.”

“His dog.” Jenny’s reminder was met with a flurry of barks.

Zoe stared at the ground, listening. “I’m going in.”

“You can’t just break in.”

“Who says?” Tony stood behind Zoe.

Without another word, he and Zoe got their fingers under the sash and pushed until the window went up—one drawn-out squeal at a time.

“Grab my butt and legs,” Zoe ordered, hiking her black dress up over her knees. Tony and Jenny did as they were told.

“Come on, guys. Lift together. I’m not a sack of beans, you know.” She grunted and then was over the sill, hanging half in the house, dirty curtains around her.

“Hey,” she screamed, “Fida! Fida! Oh my God!”

“Is it really her?” Jenny hung in the window to see.

Zoe was through, landing on the other side with a thud that shook the house. Jenny called after her, then stood listening to happy yips and small barks and then cooing from Zoe.

In a few minutes, the door opened, and Zoe stood there with two fingers pinching her nose and a wiggling Fida nipping at her arms and chin.

“Look who I found.” Zoe avoided more licks and held Fida out for the others to see. “Aaron Cane had her. I can’t imagine why.”

“Is that him in the chair?” Tony, confused, tried to see around Zoe and Fida.

“Yes. Something’s wrong. He didn’t say ‘Boo’ when I dropped in. All I could do was pick Fida up or she would’ve had a heart attack.” She stepped back. Making a face, she said, “You won’t believe the smell in here!”

When Jenny stepped into the house, it was first thing to hit her. Thick and awful. Earthy and chemical. The stink of heated iron mixed with the fetid odor of a kennel.

“Whew!” Jenny pulled back, letting Tony be the first to approach the man. She pinched her nose shut as best she could.

“Is he asleep?” Jenny didn’t bother to whisper.

The elderly man was slumped in the worn, red plush chair. His chin rested on his chest. His arms were draped out to either side of him, hands turned up.

Tony felt for a pulse at the man’s neck and then at his wrist. He shook his head, then pointed to a small round hole in the middle of the man’s faded red shirt and to the dark stain along the buttons.

“Aaron Cane’s dead,” Tony said. “Just like Adam, only he’s been shot.”