A Line To Murder (A Puget Sound Mystery) (5 page)

* * *

I went back to work the next day. My coworkers were either covertly or blatantly eager to get a firsthand account. Some had known Isca well, others hardly at all. I was torn between amazement at their insensitivity and the knowledge that jokes and inappropriate remarks were often how people coped with tragedy.

Isca’s desk had been thoroughly checked by the police. Her personal items were gone and the various books and binders rearranged. One of the senior brokers rooted through a drawer, looking for a fine-point pen. The desk wasn’t hers anymore. A newly hired broker trainee sat there, deftly deflecting questions from various clients and employees from other branches
. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess, at least as far as the firm is concerned.
Isca’s obituary ran in Thursday’s paper. Early Friday morning, before I left for work, the phone rang. My parents were in Costa Rica, I had no boyfriend and my best friend was dead. The phone ringing at such an unexpected hour made me nervous. Plan for the worst, hope for the best; that was my philosophy. The call was from Parker who wanted to make sure I knew the funeral was Saturday at one. I don’t know why I expected him to, but Andy didn’t call.

* * *

The drive to Buckley was no longer a pleasure. The service was to be held at Arbor Chapel on the grounds of Westside Cemetery, a pretty hillside spot on the edge of town. I’d wandered there once, with my mom, doing genealogy. Neither one of us cared much for characterless ground-level markers, but the pioneer stones often told stories just by their dates. I walked slowly to the chapel and read markers. A number of deaths were in 1918, the year of the deadly Spanish-American flu, and several were from July 1900 when an overcrowded trolley went over a bridge in Tacoma on its way to a 4
th
of July festival, killing dozens.

Under ordinary circumstances, I liked graveyards. They were strangely reassuring places. The aboveground activities of caring for the below-ground residents seemed a reaffirmation of the cycle of birth, life and death. And there was no doggie doo-doo. Ahead of me, mourners trod a path of fresh
-smelling beauty bark. It led to the small chapel built many years ago of local sandstone from the nearby Wilkeson Quarry. Inside, old stained glass windows cast colors on the cedar and Douglas fir paneled walls. The fir trees from which the walls were made were named for the man who’d first written about them. It was a comforting room.

I signed the guest book, picked up a program of the service and took a seat toward the back. Two gray
haired ladies sat down in front of me blocking Isca’s casket. Both wore dark blue dresses with crocheted collars and hats with veils. Their appearance was timeless, and they reminded me of pictures of ladies in my grandmother’s bridge club.

With their posteriors firmly planted on the pew and their gloved hands clasping dark blue straw handbags, they bent their heads together like sociable parakeets talking with pleasurable excitement. They talked
sotto voce
, but I had good hearing.

“No one I know has ever been mixed up in murder before.” The thin one on the left rolled the word “murder” around in her mouth the way one rolled a chocolate. How close was she to the Haines family?

“Well, it’s not within my acquaintance either.” Her companion sounded insulted

“Of course not.” Mrs. Thin immediately recognized her
faux pas
. “I didn’t mean to imply…It’s all so perfectly dreadful. Betty is absolutely devastated. If you ask me, that’s what comes from leaving a perfectly good home and going away to work

“The day after she graduated high school I took a card over and she was already gone.”

“And to Los Angeles, of all places. It’s an absolute Sodom and Gomorrah."

Mrs. Plump nodded her head.

I was fascinated by the pleasure they seemed to be taking in the tragedy.

Both women were quiet for a moment, nodding occasionally if someone caught their attention. The unpleasant odors of hothouse flowers, perfume and aftershave ricocheted around the room like molecules in a science experiment. My head ached.
Isca would hate this
.

She’d told me once, at the funeral of a friend, she went early and inserted pansies in the chrysanthemum coffin arrangement. “Verna hated chrysanthemums. She always expected earwigs to crawl out of them. Wouldn’t you think her children would have known?”

They didn’t and Isca was the only person who remembered her friend’s love of the cheerful, multi-faced flowers.

As I recalled our conversation, my eyes filled for a minute. Before the tears spilled, my attention was drawn back to the two women.

“Andy’s the main suspect, you know,” said Mrs. Thin.

“No! Never!” Mrs. Plump’s voice carried across the aisle. People looked up and she leaned in to whisper. “Why, I’ve known him since he came here. Knew his grandparents, too. I don’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s true. I have it on good authority he’s been questioned by the police several times.”

Maybe that’s why he hasn’t called
.

Mrs. Thin added, “Well, you know why, don’t you?”

“I most certainly do not. He cut our grass and delivered our paper for years. He was a nice, quiet boy with good manners.”

“Quiet is what some call it. Secretive is what I call it. Always kept to himself.”

“He and my John were close. Spent hours in the workshop. He loved working with wood. Liked my salal berry pie too.”

“Be that as it may, things got real ugly with Isca.”

My ears perked up at that. The fight Andy mentioned happened shortly before Isca’s murder. She hadn’t had time to tell me about it and, other than the vicar, she hadn’t mentioned any particular problems. Under the pretense of putting my purse under the pew in front of me, I bent forward.

“What…” Organ music interrupted Mrs. Plump’s question and a pleasant baritone voice began to sing “I Believe.”

It was a nice service. Some of the music was nontraditional but nevertheless appropriate. A woman named Cruise gave the eulogy. It was a moment before I recognized the name as that of a Tacoma nursing home director. Isca did volunteer work at the home, under an Adopt a Nursing Home project. She genuinely liked visiting with the elderly and it was good to hear her praised. I was glad the elderly women and Dominic would hear the compliments. Somehow it seemed important for Isca’s son to hear good things right now.

After the chapel service, we walked a short distance across the newly cut grass to an awning. There a minister gave a short graveside service. The lawn’s smell was a welcome relief after the heavily lily-scented chapel. As we grouped around, a couple of birds, intent on gathering worms, flew away. Andy kept Dominic close with a reassuring hand on his shoulder. However, at the sad and haunting words, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Dominic burst into tears and Andy led him away.

On behalf of the Haines family, the minister invited everyone back to their home for refreshments. Once again, I had to park some distance away. Behind groups of people, but by myself, I walked to the house carrying a pan of lasagna. As soon as it finished cooking, I’d wrapped it in towels. Driving up, tomato and basil smells filled the car. It could be served now or frozen. I hoped now.

The front porch had been freshly white washed. I climbed the old wooden steps to the front door with a feeling of dread and
déjà vu
. Again, all the overstuffed chairs, protected with doilies, were full of people. Women bustled in and out of the kitchen, putting casseroles and salads on the dining room table. Parker sat near his mother. Mr. Haines wasn’t in view.

Mr. Jackson, one of our bosses, was there to represent the firm. A brokerage house always stayed opened until well after the market closed. Getting funeral time off was officially restricted to deceased parents and siblings. Still, there should have been others. I’d missed seeing him at the service and took my coffee over to say hello.

“Nasty piece of business.” He looked as if he wanted to be anywhere else. “Nice service, though.”

“The sentiments were comforting and sincere. Isca would have liked the music.”

Then Mr. Haines joined us and the conversation turned to investments. I saw my two unknown companions come in and heard Parker greet them. The plump one was Mrs. Berry and her thin friend was Miss Paget. After a few moments, they broke away from the others and sat next to each other on the love seat. Murmuring my excuses to the men, I moved to take a position behind them. I wanted to hear the rest of their conversation. Having no real excuse to stand there, I sipped my coffee and tried to look thoughtful.

“Lovely service,” said Mrs. Berry

Well, we certainly all seem to agree on that
.

“Yes, it was. Lovely music too. A little modern, though, for my taste. I like the old hymns. ‘Rock of Ages,’ for example.”

“Hmmm.”

It was almost amusing. Both undoubtedly wanted to return to their earlier topic but neither seemed set on offering the other an opening.

“Strange volunteer work for Isca, I thought,” continued Mrs. Berry. “Never knew her to be interested in that sort of thing.”

“She could knit and crochet real well. Her gramma saw to that. I think that’s what she did with the ladies at the Home. They made baby blankets for new mothers at one of Tacoma’s hospitals. The mothers got to keep them.”

Silence again. The conversation wasn’t going in the right direction.

Miss Paget changed the subject. “Dominic took it real hard, didn’t he? Still, I never did hold with the new-fashioned idea of keeping children away from a funeral. They need to say good-bye. Always enjoyed a funeral when I was young. You learned the most interesting things.”

Both paused to sip their coffees.

“Andy looked stony-faced,” said Miss Paget.

Ah, that’s good. A nice opening. Take the bait.
I willed myself to invisibility, but there was no need. Both seemed eager to resume their former conversation.

“They separated once before you know,” Mrs. Berry said. “Several years before the divorce.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

Neither did I.

“It was while they lived in California. Right around when Dominic was born.” She paused.

“Well, couples often reconcile after a baby, don’t they? Children hold you together.”

Not in this day and age
.

“Dominic nearly died or Andy mightn’t have come back. He would’a died in the old days, I guess, before modern medicine. I lost two, you know. I suppose Andy felt like a rat walking out on them at a time like that, even though rumors were everywhere.”

What rumors?

At this point, Parker’s wife interrupted the conversation when she refilled their coffee cups. On her heels a little girl came by with a platter of cookies, and both ladies helped themselves. I refused both the coffee and cookies with a shake of my head and waited.

Mrs. Berry took a bite of her cookie. She swallowed. “Even though he thought he had good reason.”

“What reason?”

“He never really thought Dominic was his.”

Chapter 5

Not Andy’s child? If not Andy’s, whose? My gosh! What next?

The two elderly ladies bent their heads closer together and lowered their voices. Try as I might to hear them, only words and bits of sentences drifted back to me, “boyfriend,” “drugs,” “trapped,” “not much money.” They broke off when other people joined them and after that, the conversation became more general. I was thankful when some of the guests began to take their leave and moved to join them.

“Don’t be a stranger now, Mercedes.” Mrs. Haines had quit crying and seemed to be holding up better than her husband. He looked ashen faced.

“I’ll be in touch.” I hugged them both.
Will I?

On the way home, I slowed to a crawl at the turn. The mirror reflected the road’s bend as it was supposed to. My skid marks went into the ditch. At the next wide spot I pulled over and stopped to think. Isca’s murder sure looked like it had something to do with her phone line, but did that lead to my car being tagged and the near accident? A bit of a stretch. Where did Andy come into the picture? A shouting match with his ex-wife, his thinking he might not be Dominic’s father, not to mention one of the old ladies calling him secretive. I rubbed my eyebrows, another nervous gesture. Thought problems were not my thing and a headache was coming on. When Andy and I talked, he seemed like an okay guy, but when he wasn’t around, the words “dark horse” came to mind. Hmmm. I decided to drop in at the police station after work the next day and ask how the investigation was going and immediately
I felt better. Maybe someone there would let something slip. With that decision made I started the car and inched carefully down the road.

Traffic into the valley was light. I stopped for a cup of coffee in Sumner and drank it while reading the paper. The mom-and-pop restaurant had a pleasant buzz going on and it lightened my mood.

At home, Jose was glad to see me. So was the stray cat that had taken to slumbering on the apartment’s front porch or occasionally on my balcony. The building was quiet and quiet was the last thing I wanted. I turned the TV on and found a movie, fed the cat and tried to play with Jose. He wasn’t buying it. The next day I dropped in at the police station. At my inquiry, Detective Wade came out and showed me to an interview room. I sat on a hard metal chair and he sat opposite. The room smelled like it had seen its fill of bad guys.