The Outsmarting of Criminals: A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim (9 page)

Officer Reed gone, Lorraine
steered the conversation away from the investigation.

“We’ll continue
your official research soon enough, Felicity, but now’s as good a time as any to give me all the details of your
amour
back in New York. Is he simply dashing? Totally unsuitable, or so suitable it’s boring? Don’t hold back on the details, please. My marriage to Lucian is so devastatingly uninteresting that I must live vicariously through others. If you need to embellish for entertainment value, feel free to do so. I’ve been known to embellish myself, every now and again. Makes life worth living, yes?” She tapped the side of her nose twice and winked conspiratorially.

Thus
Miss Prim found herself talking about her longtime relationship with Doctor Poe and how they seemed to be on the cusp of … something difficult to define. His timing had been quite poor, Miss Prim admitted, what with waiting to declare his affections until after she’d purchased a home quite a distance from New York City.

“Isn’t that just like a man?” Lorraine
asked in her usual rhetorical way. “They admire us from afar, mooning all over the place like courtly knights in medieval days, but God forbid they ever put themselves out there emotionally. Do you know I had to ask Lucian to marry
me
? I got so tired of all the dithering around, and it wasn’t as if I didn’t have other suitors who knew a good thing when they saw it. And the smarter they are when it comes to books, the dumber they are when it comes to women. Your doctor sounds like a good egg, but the dead wife thing worries me. When they’ve been married for so long, they get used to it, you know? And they figure one woman is as good as another. It’s being married that they like, not necessarily the woman. That’s not meant as a swipe against
you
, Tootsie Pop. We girls have to stick together when it comes to men. Let’s face facts:
They
need
us
more than
we
need
them
.”

When Lorraine interrupted her own monologue to visit the ladies’, Miss Prim took the opportunity to chat with the barista and the patrons of Beantown. All looked closely at the photo of the dead man. All shook their heads; sorry, they did not recognize him, though the barista thought him “ruggedly handsome” and asked if he was single.

Miss Prim encountered her first piece of luck when she approached the young woman writing in her journal.
Miss Dreadlocks looked at the photo, pursed her lips, and said quietly, “Hmm. I can’t say that I
know
him, but somehow he looks familiar. I can’t place him, but I’d say I’ve seen him around town, or at least someone who
looks
like him. I think it’s the beard that’s throwing me off.”

“
Any idea where you might have encountered him?” Miss Prim asked hopefully.

The woman shook her
locks. “Maybe the library? Or the post office? I just don’t know, but the bone structure—it’s nice—I would remember a face like that, and something’s telling me I’ve seen him before.”

Not much
specific information
, Miss Prim thought,
but it’s a start
. Clearly the victim hadn’t lived in town. If he had, someone would have recognized him by now. But maybe he was related to somebody who lived in Greenfield? That might explain the resemblance.

Miss Prim
belatedly introduced herself.

“Pleased to meet you,” said the young lady. “I’m Faye Cotillard.”

*

Thei
r next stop was Prothero’s market. As Miss Prim found a basket, Lorraine promptly disappeared down one of the aisles.

Because she had not brought her much-loved wheelie-cart to
Prothero’s, Miss Prim added just the necessities to her basket: vegetables—bread—eggs—Milk Bones—even, yes, a small and overpriced dinner bell that she would use to train Bruno not to drool upon seeing or smelling food. As she strolled the aisles, she saw Prothero’s concessions to modernity: a gourmet-foods section at the rear, where busy professionals could purchase prepared foods; an overpriced salad bar with many epicurean goodies, such as bleu cheese crumbles and five-bean salad; even a gifts section, a boon for husbands and children who remember (or are reminded of) birthdays at the last minute.

Deciding that
she had selected the maximum weight and bulk that she and Lorraine could carry to Rose Cottage without a loss of gravitas, Miss Prim began walking to the front of the market. Behind one cash register stood a patrician-looking woman with stiff silver hair. She wore a pearl necklace and pearl earrings. Copious rings called attention to her well-manicured fingernails.

Miss Prim
began unloading her groceries onto the belt and—could she be imagining this?—felt the cashier’s withering stare stabbing ice picks into her. Miss Prim glanced up to read the woman’s name tag: Hi! My name is MISS LAVELLE and I’ve been serving you for 42 year(s)!

Pay dirt
, Miss Prim thought.
Here is someone who will recognize the man in the photo.
She would have smiled if she had not continued to sense the hatred emanating from Miss Lavelle’s pores.

Miss Lavelle began ringing up
Miss Prim’s groceries, handling them much more roughly than a cashier should. Loaves of bread were squashed between Miss Lavelle’s beringed fingers; eggs in their styrofoam containers were crushed against the aluminum sides of the bagging area; produce was weighed and then tossed like yesterday’s garbage down the belt.

A
fter giving Miss Lavelle the benefit of the doubt for half the order, Miss Prim decided to speak up.

“Excuse me? May I ask you to be a bit more … gentle … with the goods?”

Miss Lavelle’s eyes became Satanic slits.

“
So
sorry,” said the queen of Prothero’s market in a tone indicating she was not sorry in the least. “I apologize if we aren’t up to your New York City standards.”

Miss Prim took a breath, remembering the shibboleths
Mama had drilled into her head.
A stitch in time saves nine
: Yes.
Don’t lose the forest for the trees:
Yes.
A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met:
Yes, until this very moment.

Miss Prim was preparing her response when Lorraine materialized, as if out of thin air.

“Knock it off, Gladys. If I’d seen your broom parked outside, I would have warned Felicity about you. Felicity, for the record, Miss Lavelle here has been sleeping with Ethan Prothero for the last 41 years, but he has yet to marry her. The fact that he’s already married is probably what’s standing in their way. As you can see, the wait has made her irritable.”

“I’ll tell you what’s making me
irritable, Lorraine. You. And Miss Prissy here, thinking she’s going to sweep Greenfield off its feet with her charms.” Miss Gladys Lavelle eyed Miss Prim again. “You’re a nosy little thing, aren’t you? Running yourself all over the place with a photo and acting like you’re a member of the police department that my taxes pay for. You think you’re going to be everyone’s best friend and confidante? Well, you got another thing coming. That job’s already taken. By me.
So back off
.”

The patent untruthfulness of this
assertion—could this harridan really be friend and confidante to the entire populace of Greenfield?—caused Miss Prim to lose the words that had been on the tip of her tongue.

Lorraine was not
cowed. “Miss Prim
can
and
will
do whatever she likes, and you’ll stay out of her way, Gladys Lavelle, or I’ll have a good long conversation with Ethan. And with Mrs. Prothero. So I’ll thank you to do your job, shut up, and mind your own business.”

“W
hy don’t you do the same, Lorraine Koslowski? I have half a mind to …”

Lorraine reached into her pillowcase and removed her cell phone. She
ran down her list of contacts, “Miriam Lockwood. June Milutich. Perry Norbert. Here she is, Amanda Prothero …”

Ethel,
another Prothero’s cashier who’d been watching and listening to the histrionics with interest, interceded. “Gladys, I’d shut my trap if I were you. You know Lorraine isn’t one to bluff.”

Perhaps sensing defeat, Miss Lavelle furiously began bagging Miss Prim’s purchases. She completed the transaction without another w
ord.

On the walk back
to Rose Cottage, still trying to cope with the embarrassment that goes with being made into a public spectacle against one’s will, Miss Prim admitted to Lorraine that the Miss Lavelle incident had left her a bit shaken.

“
Don’t mind her, Felicity,” Lorraine said, kindly. “I should have warned you. As you’ve probably figured out, Gladys Lavelle is easily threatened. Her parents were muckety-mucks in town, and back in the day everyone thought Gladys would marry some robber baron and live in a mansion in Boston. But it never happened, and her family’s money has run out, and … well, you can see what it’s done to her. She was less of a harpy forty years ago. But look on the bright side. You’re experiencing everything that a New England village has to offer. It’s not quite what you expected, is it?”

Miss Prim
nodded in agreement.

As they strolled past the Cambria & Calibri bookstore, the proprietress stuck her head out the door.

“You!” she called to Miss Prim. “You’re new to Greenfield, right? Stop in soon, please. And don’t let me hear that you’re buying books on the Internet.”

Thoroughly exhausted by her altercation with Miss Lavelle, Miss Prim could only nod, wave, and keep walking.

“Now you see why Martin Reed loves his sweets,” Lorraine said.

“I’m afraid I d
on’t understand,” Miss Prim replied.

“
That was Valeska Reed. His wife.”

A Feisty Teenager

The following morning, Miss Prim was up and about early, watering the roses, waiting for journalists who never arrived, and taking Bruno for a brisk walk.

Miss Prim smiled in greeting as she passed Jedediah Mason, who touched his cap in a delightfully old-fashioned manner, and she pretended to window-shop when,
from the corner of her eye, she caught Miss Gladys Lavelle striding purposefully toward Prothero’s, her nametag glinting aggressively in the sun.

Miss Prim
arrived at the Greenfield Police Department, on the fashionable east side of the village green, and tied Bruno’s leash to a lamppost. The PD was empty save for Detective Dawes, who sat at his desk peering at a document through half-moon glasses. As Miss Prim entered, Dawes glanced up and quickly removed his spectacles.

“Hello, Miss Prim. Sorry I haven’t called you back yet. I’m
assuming
it was you, at least. Spike left a note saying that Miss Trimm called.”

“Yes,
it was I who called. I hope I am not disturbing you? I understand how valuable a detective’s time is. But I think we both know that challenging cases are quite often solved by a professional and an amateur working together. Yes, the professional is sometimes resentful of the amateur’s meddling; and yes, the amateur is sometimes frustrated by the draconian rules imposed by the professional. But they come to realize that two heads are better than one, and they end up with a profound respect for each other.”

Dawes smiled, a lightning flash that was like an arrow to Miss Prim’s secretly passionate heart. “Well, Miss Prim, perhaps the scenario you describe is common in books and on television, but it would be a new phenomenon in Greenfield. I’ve been here more than twenty years and I haven’t yet forged any alliances with amateur detectives. And you’re absolutely correct, there are rules against such things. But who knows? There’s a first time for everything, and like Spike said, we’re not exactly overstaffed here at the Greenfield PD.” He sighed. “We haven’t had a murder in decades,
and everyone in the department is rusty. I think I’ve become complacent writing the occasional traffic ticket and calming down rowdy sports fans at Maude’s once in a while.”

“
Has any new information come to light?”

“Not yet. Spike and Reed are still asking questions around town, but nobody knows who the guy is.
Olivia swore on a stack of Bibles that she knew nothing about the hidden basement. Which ticks her off, because she thinks she could have gotten you to pay more for the cottage if she
had
known. Extra square footage, you know. And your house was on the multiple-listing service. That means that any real-estate agent in Connecticut could have shown it to a prospective buyer while it was empty. The agents usually leave their business cards behind, and Olivia had collected them, but she threw them out when you closed on the house. So we have no record of who went there, or which realtor showed it to which client. That’s next on my list, actually—calling other real-estate agents in Litchfield County. The locks are old and could have been easily picked”—Miss Prim did not mention that she’d since had the locks replaced—“so anyone could have gotten in. I’ve talked to everyone worked on your house before you moved in, too. All dead ends.”