Wish You Were Here (9 page)

14

BoomBoom Craycroft thought the worst of everybody. Much as she tried to keep her emotions to herself they kept spilling over, and since she wouldn't express her sorrow, what she expressed was anger. Right now she was furious with Susan Tucker and she took a sabbatical on manners.

“I don't give a good goddam what you think. And I don't care if whoever killed Maude killed Kelly. I want whoever killed Kelly and I'm going to get him.”

Susan hung her head. To a passerby it would appear she was addressing her golf ball with her five iron, an unusual choice off the tee. “BoomBoom, calm yourself. You were the one who wanted to play golf. You said sitting home would drive you crazy.”

BoomBoom, warming up, swung her wood and dug up a clump of Farmington Country Club turf. If the greensman had been there he would have suffered a coronary. Susan, wordlessly, replaced BoomBoom's divot, then hit a beauty off the tee.

“Been a woody and you'd be on the green,” BoomBoom advised. “I don't know why I kept this golf date with you. You do the screwiest things on a golf course.”

“I still beat you.”

“Not today you won't.” BoomBoom stuck the tee in the ground, put the ball on it, and without a practice swing, socked away. The ball rose with a pleasing loft and then veered left, only to disappear in the rough.

“Shit!” BoomBoom threw her club on the ground. Not satisfied, she stamped on it. “Shit! Fuck! Damn!”

Susan held her breath during the indiscriminate rampage, which concluded with BoomBoom turning her expensive leather golf bag upside down. Balls and gloves fell out of the open zippers. Exhausted from her fury, BoomBoom sat on the ground.

“Honey, it's the pits.” Susan sat next to her and put her arm around her. “Would you like to go home?”

“No. I hate it there more than I hate it here.” BoomBoom shook when she inhaled. “Let's play. I feel better when I'm moving. I'm sorry I yelled at you when you were giving me the third degree. I didn't mind Rick Shaw so much but those grotesque news-people ought to be horsewhipped. I slammed the door in their faces. I just didn't want to hear it from you.”

“I am really sorry. Harry and I think if those of us who know one another as friends snoop around we might find something. It's a horrendous strain and I haven't helped.”

“You have. I got to scream and holler and throw my bag on the ground. I feel better for it.” She nimbly got up, righted her bag.

Susan picked up the balls. “Here.” She noticed the brand name. “When did you buy these?”

“Last week. Ought to be gold-plated, the expensive buggers. See my initials on them.” She pointed to a red
B
.
B
.
C
. carefully incised into the gleaming white surface.

“How'd you do that?”

“I didn't. Josiah did. He's got tools for everything. He cracks me up, buying this gilded junk, making repairs on it, and then selling it to some parvenu for a bundle.”

“He is funny, though.” Susan reached her ball.

BoomBoom waited until Susan was midway into her backswing. “Josiah said Mim has a purse with a lock on it. Isn't that perfect?” She laughed.

Naturally Susan's shot was ruined. “Damn you.”

The ball plunked into the water, sending up a plume.

That made BoomBoom temporarily happy. She found her ball, walked around it as though it were a snake, and finally hit it out of the rough. Not a bad shot.

“If you do think of anything, you will tell me?”

“Yes.” BoomBoom picked up her bag. She wouldn't use golf carts because that defeated the purpose of golf for her. On weekends she'd use one because the club forced her to, and she complained plenty about it. She even pointed out one fat board member at the Nineteenth Hole and declared if he'd get out of his golf cart and walk, he might stop resembling the Michelin tire boy.

Susan peered into the water. The Canada geese peered back at her as they glided by. She carried a ball retriever for this very purpose and with some finesse she liberated her ball from the depths.

“I ought to get one of those.”

“Especially when you're paying what you're paying for golf balls.” Susan folded the retriever back and placed it in her bag. She then dropped her ball.

“Why do you think this is the work of one person?” BoomBoom had quieted enough to return to Susan's earlier question.

“Two gruesome murders—spectacularly gruesome—and within the same week.”

“That's superficial evidence. The second murderer could be a copycat. The details of Kelly's murder covered the front page of the paper, the evening news, and God knows what else. A person wouldn't have to be too clever to figure out that the time is right to settle a score, and goodbye Maude Bly Modena.”

“I never thought of that.”

“I thought of something else too.”

“What?”

“Susan, what if the police aren't telling us everything? What if they're holding something back?”

“I never thought of that either.” Susan shuddered.

15

Rick Shaw hunched over another coroner's report. Normally, the office sank into a stupor on weekends except for the drunk-driving jobs. Not this weekend. People were tense. He was tense, and the damned newspaper was keeping a reporter on his tail. The bird perched in the parking lot after he threw him out of the office.

There was no evidence of sexual abuse. The victim had been dead for two hours before the train ran over her, which the coroner also reported. However, there were no bullet wounds, no bruises on the neck, and no contusions of any sort. Again, there was a tiny trace of cyanide in the hair. Whoever was killing these people with cyanide knew a great deal about chemistry. He or she wasn't wasting the cyanide. The killer took the victim's body weight into account.

Rick shook his head and closed the report, then sidled over to Officer Cooper's desk, where he filched a cigarette from an open pack. Illicit pleasure soon to be replaced by guilt, but not until the cigarette was smoked.

A deep draw soothed him. He'd have to remember to buy a pack of Tic Tacs on the way home or his wife would smell his breath. He studied a map of the county on the wall. The positions of the two bodies were in the same general vicinity, a few miles apart. The killer was most likely a local but not necessarily a Crozet resident. Albemarle County covered 743 square miles and anyone could drive in and out of Crozet fairly easily. Of course, they knew one another out there. A stranger would be reported. No such report. Even a resident of Charlottesville or a friend from out of town would be noticed. No such notice.

The postmistress and Market Shiflett were poised at the hub of social activity. Officer Cooper had mentioned that the postmistress had an idea about postcards. People usually think what they do is relevant, and Mary Minor Haristeen was no exception. He checked out the postcards within an hour of Harry's call and the postmarks were from different locales.

Still, he decided to call Harry. After a few pleasantries he thanked her for being alert, said he'd examined the postcards and they seemed okay to him.

“Could I have them—temporarily?” Harry asked him.

He considered this. “Why?”

“I want to match them with the inks that I have in the office—just in case.”

“All right, if you promise not to harm them.”

“I won't.”

“I'll have Officer Cooper drop them by.”

After Rick Shaw's call, Harry called Rob, and he agreed to “borrow” the first postcard from France that he came across at the main post office. She swore she'd give it back to him by the next day.

Then she remembered she was supposed to interrogate Mrs. Hogendobber. She called Mrs. H., who was surprised to hear from her but agreed on a tea-time get-together.

16

Mrs. Hogendobber served a suspiciously green tea. Little chocolate cupcakes oozing a tired marshmallow center reposed on a plate of Royal Doulton china. Mrs. Hogendobber snapped one up, devouring it at a gobble.

She reminded Harry of a human version of Pewter. Stifling a giggle, Harry reached for a leaking cupcake so as not to appear ungrateful for the sumptuous repast—well, repast.

“I stopped drinking caffeine. Made me testy.” Mrs. H.'s little finger curled when she held her cup. “I purged soft drinks, coffee, even orange pekoe teas from my household.”

Obviously, she had not purged refined sugar.

“I wish I had your willpower,” Harry said.

“Stick to it, my girl, stick to it!” Another chocolate delight disappeared between the pink-lipsticked lips.

Mrs. Hogendobber's neat clapboard house was located on St. George Avenue, which ran roughly parallel to Railroad Avenue. A sweeping front porch with a swing afforded the large lady a vantage point. A trellis along the sides of the porch, choking with pink tea roses, allowed her to see everything while not being seen. The Good Lord said nothing about spying, so Mrs. Hogendobber spied with a vengeance. She chose to think of it as being curious about her fellow man.

“I'm so glad you agreed to see me,” Harry began.

“Why wouldn't I?”

“Uh, well, come to think of it, why not?” Harry smiled, reminding Mrs. H. of when Harry was a cute seven-year-old.

“I'm here to, oh, root around for clues to the murders. The telling detail, thoughts—you're so observant.”

“You have to get up early in the morning to put one over on me.” Mrs. H. lapped up the compliment, and truthfully, she didn't miss much. “My late husband, God rest his soul, used to say, ‘Miranda, you were born with eyes in the back of your head.' I could anticipate his wants and he thought I had special powers. No special powers. I was a good wife. I paid attention. It's the little things that make a marriage, my dear. I hope you have reviewed your marriage and will reconsider your acts. I doubt there are any men out there better than Fair—only different. They're all trouble in their unique ways.” She poured herself more tea and opened her mouth but no sound escaped. “Where was I?”

“. . . trouble in their unique ways.” Harry hardly thought of herself in those terms.

“If you'd kick off those sneakers and buy some nice smocks instead of those jeans, I think he'd come to his senses.”

“Love usually involves losing your senses, not coming to them.”

Mrs. H. pondered this. “Yes . . . yes.”

Before she could launch on to another tangent, Harry inquired, “What did you think of Maude Bly Modena?”

“I thought she was a Catholic. Italian-looking, you know. The shop proved how shrewd she was. Now I never socialized with her. My social life is the Church, and well, as I said, I think Maude was Catholic.” Mrs. Hogendobber cleared her throat on “Catholic.” “I, like yourself, only knew her for five years. Not a great deal of time but enough to get a feel for a person, I guess. She seemed quite fond of Josiah.”

“What
did
you feel then?”

The bosom heaved. She was dying to be allowed to wander into the subjective. “I felt that she was hiding something—always, always.”

“Like what?”

“I wish I knew. She didn't cheat anyone at the shop. I never heard of her shortchanging or overcharging but there was something, oh, not quite right. She spoke very little of her background.” Unlike Mrs. Hogendobber, who fairly galloped down Memory Lane, given half a chance to speak of her past.

“She didn't tell me much either. I assumed she was discreet. After all, she was a Yankee.”

“Not one of us, my dear, not one of us. Her manners were adequate. She missed the refinements, of course—they all do. But then there's Mim, who is overrefined, if you ask me.”

“I liked her. I even grew accustomed to the accent.” Uneasiness crept into Harry's heart. She felt that poor Maude wasn't here to defend herself and she was sorry for asking about her.

“I couldn't understand much of what she said. I relied on tone of voice, hand gestures, that sort of thing. I bet she's from a Mafia family.”

“Why?”

“Well, she was Catholic and Italian.”

“It doesn't follow that she was from a Mafia family.”

“No, but you can't prove otherwise.”

Driving home, Harry started to laugh. It was all so horrible and horribly funny. Did a person have to die before you discovered the truth about her? As long as someone is alive the chance exists that whatever you have said about her will get back to her. Therefore, Harry and most of Crozet measured their words. You thought twice before you spoke, especially if you intended to say what you thought.

The other thing Harry learned from Mrs. Hogendobber was the time, occupants, and license plate number of every car that had rolled down St. George Avenue in the last twenty-four hours. The Citizens' Alert was Mrs. Hogendobber's opportunity to be rewarded for her natural nosiness.

17

Ned Tucker dreamed of sleeping late on Sunday mornings but the alarm clanged at 6:30
A
.
M
. He opened his eyes, cut off the offending noise, and sat up. The digital clock blinked the time in a turquoise-blue color. It occurred to Ned that a generation of American children wouldn't know how to tell time with a conventional clock. Then again, they couldn't add and subtract either. Calculators performed that labor for them.

Harry said she hated digital clocks. They reminded her of little amputees. No hands. Ned smiled, thinking about Harry. Susan turned over and he smiled even more. His wife could sleep through an earthquake, a thunderstorm, you name it. He'd give her an extra forty-five minutes and feed the kids. The chores of fatherhood comforted him. What worried him was the example he set. He didn't want to be a slave to his job but he didn't want to be too lazy either. He didn't want to be too stern but he didn't want to be too lax. He didn't want to treat his son any differently from his daughter but he knew he did. It was so much easier to love a daughter—but then, that was what Susan said about their son.

A shower and a shave brightened Ned; a cup of coffee popped him in gear. He'd need to awaken Brookie and Dan in twenty minutes to get them up for church. He decided to take what precious quiet time he had and peruse the bills. Everything was more expensive than it should have been and his heart dropped each time he wrote a check. First he scanned his bank statement. A five hundred dollar withdrawal last Monday really woke him up. He made no such withdrawal last Monday and neither did Susan. Anything over two hundred dollars had to be discussed between them. He wanted to crumple the statement but neatly put it aside. Couldn't contact the bank until tomorrow anyway.

The telephone rang at seven o'clock. Ned picked it up. “Hello.”

“Ned, you're up as early as I am so I hope I'm not being rude in calling.” Josiah DeWitt, mellow-voiced, sounded serious.

“What can I do for you?” Ned wondered.

“You are, were, Maudie's lawyer, am I right?”

“Yes.” Ned hadn't thought of Maude since he got up. Being reminded brought back the uneasiness, the nagging suspicions.

“Since she has no living relatives I'd like to claim the body”—he sighed—“or what's left of it, and give her a decent burial. It's not right that she be left to a potter's field.”

As Josiah was tight as the bark on a tree, Ned was astonished. “I think we can work this out, Josiah,” he said, then added, “But if you'll allow me, I'll take up a collection for the interment. We should all pull our weight on this.”

“I'd be most grateful.” Josiah did sound relieved. “Do you know of anyone who might have a plot, who could help us out there?”

“I'll ask Herbie Jones. He'll know.” Herbie Jones was the minister at Crozet Lutheran Church.

“Do we even know what denomination Maude was?” Josiah asked.

“No, but Herb has always had a wide embrace. I don't think he'd mind if she were a Muslim. Would you like me to inquire about a service also?”

“Yes—I think we should. And one more thing, Ned: I'd like to run her store and buy it when that's feasible. I don't know what paperwork will be involved but Maudie built a good business. It was her love, you know. I'll keep it up in her honor, and for the profit too. She'll come back to haunt me if I don't make a profit.”

“She left her estate to the M.S. Foundation, so we will need to negotiate with them.”

“Really?” Josiah was consumed with interest but refrained from boring in.

“She had a brother who died from the disease.”

“You know more about Maude than any of us.” Josiah was envious.

“Not really. But I'll do what I can. It would be wonderful to keep the shop going and I can't see that the M.S. Foundation has the personnel or the desire to come out here to Crozet and sell packing materials. I'll do my best.”

“Thank you.”

“No, Josiah, thank you. I wish Maude could know what good friends she had.” And he thought to himself that good friend or not, Josiah was quick to see a way to make more money.