Murder on the Prowl (11 page)

20

Johnny Pop, the 1958 John Deere tractor, rolled through the meadow thick with goldenrod. Tucker pouted by a fallen walnut at the creek. Mrs. Murphy sat in Harry's lap. Tucker, a trifle too big and heavy, envied the tiger her lap status.

As the tractor popped by, she turned and gazed into the creek. A pair of fishy eyes gazed right back. Startled, Tucker took a step back and barked, then sheepishly sat down again.

The baking sun and two days of light winds had dried out the wet earth. Harry, determined to get in one more hay cutting before winter, fired up Johnny Pop the minute she thought she wouldn't get stuck. She couldn't hear anything, so Mrs. Hogendobber startled her when she walked out into the meadow.

Tucker, intent on her bad mood, missed observing the black Falcon rumbling down the drive.

Miranda waved her arms over her head. “Harry, stop!”

Harry immediately flipped the lever to the left, cutting off the motor. “Miranda, what's the matter? What are you doing out here on gardening day?”

“Roscoe Fletcher's dead—for real, this time.”

“What happened?” Harry gasped.

Mrs. Murphy listened. Tucker, upon hearing the subject, hurried over from the creek.

Pewter was asleep in the house.

“Died at the car wash. Heart attack or stroke. That's what Mim says.”

“Was she there?”

“No. I forgot to ask her how she found out. Rick Shaw told Jim Sanburne, most likely, and Jim told Mim.”

“It's ironic.” Harry shuddered.

“The obit?”

Harry nodded. Mrs. Murphy disagreed.
“It's not ironic. It's murder. Wait and see. Cat intuition.”

21

Sean Hallahan pushed a laundry cart along a hallway so polished it reflected his image.

The double doors at the other end of the corridor swung open. Karen and Jody hurried toward him.

“How'd you get in here?” he asked.

Ignoring the question, Jody solemnly said, “Mr. Fletcher's dead. He died at the car wash.”

“What?” Sean stopped the cart from rolling into them.

Karen tossed her ponytail. “He went in and never came out.”

“Went in what?” Sean appeared stricken, his face white.

“The car wash,” Jody said impatiently. “He went in the car wash, but at the other end, he just sat. Looks like he died of a heart attack.”

“Are you making this up?” He smiled feebly.

“No. We were there. It was awful. Brooks Tucker found him.”

“For real,” he whispered.

“For real.” Jody put her arm around his waist. “No one's going to think anything. Really.”

“If only I hadn't put that phony obituary in the paper.” He gulped.

“Yeah,” the girls chimed in unison.

“Wait until my dad hears about this. He's going to kill me.” He paused. “Who knows?”

“Depends on who gets to the phone first, I guess.” Karen hadn't expected Sean to be this upset. She felt sorry for him.

“We came here first before going home. We thought you should know before your dad picks you up.”

“Thanks,” he replied, tears welling in his eyes.

22

Father Michael led the assembled upper and lower schools of St. Elizabeth's in a memorial service. Naomi Fletcher, wearing a veil, was supported by Sandy Brashiers with Florence Rubicon, the Latin teacher, on her left side. Ed Sugarman, the chemistry teacher, escorted a devastated April Shively.

Many of the younger children cried because they were supposed to or because they saw older kids crying. In the upper school some of the girls carried on, whipping through boxes of tissues. A few of the boys were red-eyed as well, including, to everyone's surprise, Sean Hallahan, captain of the football team.

Brooks reported all this to Susan, who told Harry and Miranda when they joined her at home for lunch.

“Well, he ate too much, he drank too much, and who knows what else he did—too much.” Susan summed up Roscoe's life.

“How's Brooks handling it?” Harry inquired.

“Okay. She knows people die; after all, she watched her grandma die by inches with cancer. In fact, she said, ‘When it's my time I want to go fast like Mr. Fletcher.'”

“I don't remember thinking about dying at all at her age,” Harry wondered out loud.

“You didn't think of anything much at her age,” Susan replied.

“Thanks.”

“Children think of death often; they are haunted by it because they can't understand it.” Miranda rested her elbows on the table to lean forward. “That's why they go to horror movies—it's a safe way to approach death, scary but safe.”

Harry stared at Miranda's elbows on the table. “I never thought of that.”

“I know I'm not supposed to have my elbows on the table, Harry, but I can't always be perfect.”

Harry blinked. “It's not that at all—it's just that you usually are—perfect.”

“Aren't you sweet.”

“Harry puts her feet on the table, she's so imperfect.”

“Susan, I do not.”

“You know what was rather odd, though?” Susan reached for the sugar bowl. “Brooks told me Jody said she was glad Roscoe was dead. That she didn't like him anyway. Now that's a bit extreme even for a teenager.”

“Yeah, but Jody's been extreme lately.” Harry got up when the phone rang. Force of habit.

“Sit down. I'll answer it.” Susan walked over to the counter and lifted the receiver.

“Yes. Of course, I understand. Marilyn, it could have an impact on your fund-raising campaign. I do suggest that you appoint an interim headmaster immediately.” Susan paused and held the phone away from her ear so the others could hear Little Mim's voice. Then she spoke again. “Sandy Brashiers. Who else? No, no, and no,” she said after listening to three questions. “Do you want me to call anyone? Don't fret, doesn't solve a thing.”

“She'll turn into her mother,” Miranda predicted as Susan hung up the receiver.

“Little Mim doesn't have her mother's drive.”

“Harry, not only do I think she has her mother's drive, I think she'll run for her father's seat once he steps down as mayor.”

“No way.” Harry couldn't believe the timid woman she had known since childhood could become that confident.

“Bet you five dollars,” Miranda smugly said.

“According to Little Mim, the Millers are divorcing.”

“Oh, dear.” Miranda hated such events.

“About time.” Harry didn't like hearing of divorce either, but there were exceptions. “Still, there is no such thing as a good divorce.”

“You managed,” Susan replied.

“How quickly you forget. During the enforced six months' separation every married couple and single woman in this town invited my ex-husband to dinner. Who had me to dinner, I ask you?”

“I did.” Miranda and Susan spoke in chorus.

“And that was it. The fact that I filed for the divorce made me an ogre. He was the one having the damned affair.”

“Sexism is alive and well.” Susan apportioned out seven-layer salad, one of her specialties. She stopped, utensils in midair. “Did either of you like Roscoe Fletcher?”

“De mortuis nil nisi bonum,”
Miranda advised.

“Speak nothing but good about the dead,” Harry translated although it was unnecessary. “Maybe people said that because they feared the departed spirit was nearby. If they gave you trouble while alive, think what they could do to you as a ghost.”

“Did you like Roscoe Fletcher?” Susan repeated her question.

Harry paused. “Yes, he had a lot of energy and good humor.”

“A little too hearty for my taste.” Miranda found the salad delicious. “Did you like him?”

Susan shrugged. “I felt neutral. He seemed a bit phony sometimes. But maybe that was the fund-raiser in him. He had to be a backslapper and glad-hander, I suppose.”

“Aren't we awful, sitting here picking the poor man apart?” Miranda dabbed her lipstick-coated lips with a napkin.

The phone rang again. Susan jumped up. “Speaking of letting someone rest in peace, I'd like to eat in peace.”

“You don't have to answer it,” Harry suggested.

“Mothers always answer telephones.” She picked up the jangling device. “Hello.” She paused a long time. “Thanks for telling me. You've done the right thing.”

Little Mim had rung back to say St. Elizabeth's had held an emergency meeting by conference call.

Sandy Brashiers had been selected interim headmaster.

23

Late that afternoon, a tired Father Michael bent his lean frame, folding himself into the confessional.

He usually read until someone entered the other side of the booth. The residents of Crozet had been particularly virtuous this week because traffic was light.

The swish of the fabric woke him as he half dozed over the volume of Thomas Merton, a writer he usually found provocative.

“Father, forgive me for I have sinned,” came the formalistic opening.

“Go on, my child.”

“I have killed and I will kill again.” The voice was muffled, disguised.

He snapped to attention, but before he could open his mouth, the penitent slipped out of the booth. Confused, Father Michael pondered what to do. He felt he must stay in the booth for the confessional hours were well-known—he had a responsibility to his flock—but he wanted to call Rick Shaw immediately. Paralyzed, he grasped the book so hard his knuckles were white. The curtain swished again.

A man's voice spoke, deep and low. “Father forgive me for I have sinned.”

“Go on, my child,” Father Michael said as his mind raced.

“I've cheated on my wife. I can't help myself. I have strong desires.” He stopped.

Father Michael advised him by rote, gave him a slew of Hail Marys and novenas. He kept rubbing his wristwatch until eventually his wrist began to hurt. As the last second of his time in the booth expired, he bolted out, grabbed the phone, and dialed Rick Shaw.

When Coop picked up the phone, he insisted he speak to the sheriff himself.

“Sheriff Shaw.”

“Yes.”

“This is Father Michael. I don't know”—sweat beaded on his forehead; he couldn't violate what was said in the confessional booth—“I believe a murder may have taken place.”

“One has, Father Michael.”

The priest's hands were shaking. “Oh, no. Who?”

“Roscoe Fletcher.” Rick breathed deeply. “The lab report came back. He was poisoned by malathion. Not hard to get around here, so many farmers use it. It works with the speed of light so he had to have eaten it at the car wash. We've tested the strawberry hard candy in his car. Nothing.”

“There couldn't be any mistake?”

“No. We have to talk, Father.”

After Father Michael hung up the phone, he needed to collect his thoughts. He paced outside, winding up in the graveyard. Ansley Randolph's mums bloomed beautifully.

A soul was in peril. But if the confession he had heard was true, then another immortal soul was in danger as well. He was a priest. He should do something, but he didn't know what. It then occurred to him that he himself might be in danger—his body, not his soul.

Like a rabbit who hears the beagle pack, he twitched and cast his eyes around the graveyard to the Avenging Angel. It looked so peaceful.

24

His shirtsleeves rolled up, Kendrick Miller sat in his favorite chair to read the paper.

Irene swept by. “Looking for your obituary?” She arched a delicate eyebrow.

“Ha ha.” He rustled the paper.

Jody, reluctantly doing her math homework at the dining-room table so both parents could supervise, reacted. “Mom, that's not funny.”

“I didn't say it was.”

“Who knows, maybe
your
obituary will show up.” She dropped her pencil inside her book, closing it.

“If it does, Jody, you'll have placed it there.” Irene sank gracefully onto the sofa.

Jody grimaced. “Sick.”

“I can read it now: ‘Beloved mother driven to death by child—and husband.'”

“Irene . . .” Kendrick reproved, putting down the paper.

“Yeah, Mom.”

“Well”—she propped her left leg over an embroidered pillow—“I thought Roscoe Fletcher could have sold ice to Eskimos and probably did. He was good for St. Elizabeth's, and I'm sorry he died. I was even sorrier that we were all there. I would have preferred to hear about it rather than see it.”

“He didn't look bad.” Jody opened her book again. “I hope he didn't suffer.”

“Too quick to suffer.” Irene stared absently at her nails, a discreet pale pink. “What's going to happen at St. Elizabeth's?”

Kendrick lifted his eyebrows. “The board will appoint Sandy Brashiers headmaster. Sandy will try to kill Roscoe's film-course idea, which will bring him into a firefight with Maury McKinchie, Marilyn Sanburne, and April Shively. Ought to be worth the price of admission.”

“How do you know that?” Jody asked.

“I don't know it for certain, but the board is under duress. And the faculty likes Brashiers.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Father Michael can see us tomorrow at two thirty.”

“Irene, I have landscaping plans to show the Doubletree people tomorrow.” He was bidding for the hotel's business. “It's important.”

“I'd like to think I'm important. That this marriage is important,” Irene said sarcastically.

“Then you pay the bills.”

“You turn my stomach.” Irene swung her legs to the floor and left.

“Way to go, Dad.”

“You keep out of this.”

“I love when you spend the evening at home. Just gives me warm fuzzies.” She hugged herself in a mock embrace.

“I ought to—” He shut up.

“Hit me. Go ahead. Everyone thinks you gave me the shiner.”

He threw the newspaper on the floor. “I've never once hit you.”

“I'll never tell,” she goaded him.

“Who did hit you?”

“Field hockey practice. I told you.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Fine, Dad. I'm a liar.”

“I don't know what you are, but you aren't happy.”

“Neither are you,” she taunted.

“No, I'm not.” He stood up, put his hands in his pockets. “I'm going out.”

“Take me with you.”

“Why?”

“I don't want to stay home with her.”

“You haven't finished your homework.”

“How come you get to run away and I have to stay home?”

“I—” He stopped because a determined Irene reentered the living room.

“Father Michael says he can see us at nine in the morning,” she announced.

His face reddening, Kendrick sat back down, defeated. “Fine.”

“Why do you go for marriage counseling, Mom? You go to mass every day. You see Father Michael every day.”

“Jody, this is none of your business.”

“If you discuss it in front of me, it is,” she replied flippantly.

“She's got a point there.” Kendrick appreciated how intelligent his daughter was, and how frustrated. However, he didn't know how to talk to her or his manipulative—in his opinion—wife. Irene suffocated him and Jody irritated him. The only place he felt good was at work.

“Dad, are you going to give St. E's a lot of money?”

“I wouldn't tell you if I were.”

“Why not?”

“You'd use it as an excuse to skip classes.” He half laughed.

“Kendrick”—Irene sat back on the sofa—“where do you get these ideas?”

“Contrary to popular opinion, I was young once, and Jody likes to—” He put his hand out level to the floor and wobbled it.

“Learned it from you.” Jody flared up.

“Can't we have one night of peace?” Irene wailed, unwilling to really examine why they couldn't.

“Hey, Mom, we're dysfunctional.”

“That's a bullshit word.” Kendrick picked his paper up. “All those words are ridiculous. Codependent. Enabler. Jesus Christ. People can't accept reality anymore. They've invented a vocabulary for their illusions.”

Both his wife and daughter stared at him.

“Dad, are you going to give us the lecture on professional victims?”

“No.” He buried his nose in the paper.

“Jody, finish your homework,” Irene directed.

Jody stood up. She had no intention of doing homework. “I hated seeing Mr. Fletcher dead. You two don't care. It was a shock, you know.” She swept her books onto the floor; they hit with thuds equal to their differing weights. She stomped out the front door, slamming it hard.

“Kendrick, you deal with it. I was at the car wash, remember?”

He glared at her, rolled his paper up, threw it on the chair, and stalked out.

Irene heard him call for Jody. No response.