A Little Yuletide Murder (7 page)

Jake didn’t respond.

“You hear me, Jake? I’m telling you that nobody is going to do anything to you just because they don’t like you. That’s not the way things work in this country, certainly not in Cabot Cove. Sheriff Metzger doesn’t think you killed Rory, but he has a job to do. He has to ask questions, and you’re one of the persons he’s gotta ask ’em of. I assure you all that will happen is that you and the sheriff will sit down, he’ll ask his questions, you’ll answer them truthfully, and that will be the end of it.”

Unless lee did shoot Rory Brent,
I thought.

Walther responded, “Can’t trust nobody in this town. Nope, can’t trust nobody.”

Seth tried another tack. “Your wife is right worried,” he said. “She came to see Jessica Fletcher earlier tonight, told her how worried she was about you. You don’t want to cause trouble for her and Jill, do you?”

“Mary had no right goin’ to nobody.”

“Not true,” said Seth. “Mary is a good woman. Thought she was doing the right thing.”

“You talked to Mrs. Fletcher?” Jake asked through the closed door.

“Ayuh,”
said Seth. “She’s with me right now, on the porch.”

That bit of news seemed to stun Jake into another moment of prolonged silence. He eventually asked, “Who else is with you?”

I knew the internal debate going on within Seth. Does he tell Jake that the sheriff is there on his porch, or does he lie and hope to get Jake to expose himself so that Mort could act. I knew the answer. Seth would not lie.

“I’ve got Mrs. Fletcher and Sheriff Metzger here with me on the porch, Jake. Now it’s getting pretty damn cold out here. If I get sick, other people aren’t going to get treated, and that’ll be on your shoulders. If you give me pneumonia, I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive you. Now open the door and let us in.”

During the dialogue through the closed door, the wind had picked up and the temperature seemed to have dropped twenty degrees. My feet were numb and my ears stung. I hoped it would quickly be resolved one way or the other. Either Seth would prevail and Jake would do as he was told, or the standoff would continue. If that happened, it would be up to Mort to take the next step, and I dreaded what that might be.

Suddenly, the sound of a bolt being lifted from a latch was heard from inside the house. Slowly, the door swung open, and Seth was face-to-face through a torn screen door with Jake Walther.

“ ’Evening, Jake,” Seth said. “I wouldn’t mind if you’d invite us in.”

Jake undid a hook and eye on the inside of the screen door and pushed it open. Seth motioned to us with his head, and we followed. It was a sparsely furnished room filled with clutter. Piles of old newspapers almost reached a low ceiling along one side. The only heat came from a wood-stove in another corner. The floor was bare wood and sticky. A small table by a window contained what looked like the remnants of a number of meals, empty open cans of pork and beans the primary cuisine. Also on the table was a handgun.

It worked,
I thought as Mort, who was the last one into the room, closed the inside door behind us. I looked at Jake Walther, the top of his head almost touching the ceiling. He was dressed in bib overalls over a black flannel shirt. He hadn’t shaved in days, and there was a crazed look in his large, watery, pale blue eyes.

Still, I didn’t feel any sense of danger until I moved aside, affording Jake his first clear view of Mort Metzger. Mort had left his jacket open, and his hand continued to rest on his revolver. Jake scowled, grunted, mumbled an obscenity, and made a quick move to the table where his handgun rested. Mort was quicker. He pushed Walther against the wall, drew his weapon, and placed it against the back of Jake’s neck. “Now don’t do anything foolish, Jake Walther,” Mort said. “Don’t make things worse than they are.”

It happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to react. But now my breath came in hurried spurts, and I backed away as far as I could from the confrontation.

Jake didn’t resist as Mort deftly slipped a pair of handcuffs from his belt and secured them to Jake’s wrists behind his back. That completed, Mort stepped back, allowing Jake to turn and face us. He looked directly at Seth and said, “Should have known not to trust anybody, including you.”

“Damn fool thing you did, making a move for that gun,” Seth said. “Nobody was here to arrest you. Mort just wanted to talk to you, but you pull a dumb stunt like that.”

Jake looked at Mort. “Am I under arrest?” he asked.

“Depends,” Mort said. “Doc is right. If you hadn’t made that move, we’d just be sitting around talking like friends and neighbors. You didn’t leave me any choice. Now we’re going to go downtown and leave that weapon behind. I assume you’ve got a proper permit for it. Once we get to my office, depending upon how you act and talk, I might just take those cuffs off and have that friendly chat I intended to have when I came here. Understand?”

Jake said nothing, simply looked at the floor as he leaned against a wall.

I motioned for Mort and Seth to come to where I stood. “Maybe I’d better go up and tell Mary what’s happened.”

“Good idea,” Seth said, then turned to Mort. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring him downtown in my car. Should be an official vehicle.”

“Right you are,” Mort said. “Mrs. F., there’s a phone up in Mary’s place. Give a call to my office and tell whoever answers to send a squad car up here on the double.”

I left Jake’s house, went up the driveway to the middle dwelling, and knocked on the door. Mary Walther answered. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

I explained what had happened.

“Jake isn’t hurt, is he?”

“No, but he made a sudden move that caused the sheriff to react. He had to put handcuffs on Jake and is taking him to headquarters to interview him about Rory’s murder. I’m sure everything will be fine. I have to call the sheriff’s office to have a car brought up here to take Jake into town. May I use your phone?”

A half hour later, Jake was in the backseat of a squad car driven by one of Mort’s deputies. Mort got in the passenger seat, and Seth and I watched them drive off from Jake’s front porch. Mary Walther had joined us.

“Will he have to stay in jail tonight?” Mary asked.

“No tellin’,” Seth replied. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I should be with him,” Mary said.

The woman’s loyalty to her husband was admirable, especially since it was pretty well known he didn’t treat her with much kindness.

“No, you stay here,” I said. “Is your brother up in the other house?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should have him come down and stay with you tonight.”

“I don’t know if he will,” she said.

“Well, give it a try,” Seth said. “Ready to go back, Jessica?”

“Yes.”

Before we left the porch, I looked deeply into Mary’s eyes. There was profound sadness in them, and I wanted to wrap my arms about her and hug her. Which I did. Seth and I then drove back into town in relative silence.

“Come in for a drink, cup of tea?” I asked as we pulled into my driveway.

“Another time, Jessica. Didn’t think I’d end up spending today the way we did.”

“Nor did I. Do you have the same feeling I have, Seth, that Rory’s murder is only the beginning of something worse about to happen in Cabot Cove?”

He thought it over before saying, “Matter of fact, I do. But let’s not dwell on it. Good night, Jessica. Give me a call in the morning.”

I felt deflated and fatigued as I approached my front door. It had been an unfortunate day, certainly one I never dreamed would occur when I got up that morning and prepared to go about my daily life.

It wasn’t until I was only a few feet from the door and was about to insert my key that I noticed the large, circular green wreath with a puffy red ribbon hanging from it. I’d forgotten; the man who cut my lawn, shoveled my walk, and did minor repairs to my house always hung a wreath on my door in early December. Usually, the sight of it caused me to break into a smile. But I didn’t smile this time. As pretty and symbolic as the wreath was, it only reminded me that this was shaping up to be a Christmas like no other I’d ever experienced.

My clock radio went off at seven the next morning, as it always did. I kept it tuned to Cabot Cove’s only radio station, owned and operated by friends of mine, Peter and Roberta Walters. Pete did the morning show himself, weaving in interesting, often amusing tidbits of local news with pleasant music that reflected his own taste—and mine—mostly big band music and singers like Sinatra and Bennett, Mel Torme and Ella Fitzgerald.

But this morning I was awakened to the strains of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I stayed in bed until the song ended. Pete came on with his deep, pleasant voice and said, “Good morning Cabot Coveites. This is your humble morning host reminding you that you have twenty-three shopping days until Christmas.”

That reality caused me to sit up straight. Christmas seemed to start earlier and earlier each year, usually right after Thanksgiving, but even earlier in some instances. I wasn’t sure I liked that, but since there was nothing I could do about it, I didn’t dwell upon it.

I got up, put on slippers and robe, and went to the kitchen, where I turned on the teakettle and retrieved from a bag a cinnamon bun I’d bought the day before at Charlene Sassi’s bakery. As I waited for the water to boil, I looked out my window at the rear patio, covered by what I estimated to be three inches of snow. You get good at judging the depth of snow after living in Maine for a while. The two bird feeders I’d hung near the window were doing a landslide business, my little feathered friends fluttering about them in a feeding frenzy.

The teakettle’s whistle interrupted my reverie. Armed with a steaming mug of tea and the cinnamon bun, I went to the living room and turned on the television. The
Today Show
was on; the guest was an economist forecasting how well merchants would do this holiday season. I wasn’t interested in that, so I shut it off and returned to the kitchen for the more esthetic show being put on by the birds. But as I watched them, thoughts of Jake Walther and what had occurred at his house last night took center-stage.

Judging from the way things had gone, my assumption was that Jake had been detained, at least overnight, in Mort Metzger’s four-cell jail, which he was fond of referring to as his “Motel Four,” the humor undoubtedly lost on those forced to spend a night there.

I also thought of Mary Walther, poor thing, having to face what had become the town’s apparent consensus that her husband had murdered Rory Brent. I desperately hoped it wasn’t the case, that whoever shot Rory was a stranger passing through, a demented, vile individual who had no connection to Cabot Cove. But I had to admit that Jake’s sudden move toward his weapon caused me to wonder whether there might be some validity to the rumor that there was bad blood between them, and that he’d killed Rory because of it. The contemplation made me shudder.

Our local newspaper was on the front steps. I brought it inside, made a second cup of tea, and read the paper from cover to cover. Originally, it had been a weekly. But the town had grown sufficiently to prompt its publisher to turn it into a daily paper, usually dominated by news of births and deaths, local events, and the goings-on of various citizens, but with an impressive national and international section culled from wire services to which the paper subscribed. Plans for the Christmas festival occupied two entire inside pages. Rory’s murder took up most of the front page.

The reporter had tried to interview Mort Metzger, but our sheriff had simply replied, “No comment.”

Good for him, I thought. What could he possibly say at this stage of the investigation?”

But a spokesman from county law enforcement was willing to speak, at length. I recognized the picture of the officer that accompanied the article. He’d been at Rory’s barn when Mort and I arrived.

There was a biography of Rory, highlighting the fact that he’d played Santa Claus for our annual Christmas festival for the past fifteen years. A picture of him in his Santa costume was there, as well as a picture of his wife, Patricia. She, too, had decline to make a comment except to say that she was sad at her husband’s death, and hoped that whoever did it would be caught quickly.

It was at the end of the article that speculation appeared about who might have killed Rory. The reporter mentioned that Robert Brent, son of the deceased, had volunteered to come to police headquarters to give a statement, and that Jake Walther, who’d been detained for questioning, was being held in the town jail. That bothered me. It would do nothing but give credence to the rumor that he was the murderer. We’re innocent until proved guilty in court of law, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to the court of human frailty and misconception.

I was tempted to try and reach Mort to get an update on what happened last night, but fought the temptation. It really wasn’t my business, even though I’d been there when the incident with Walther had occurred. I showered and dressed. I had a nine o’clock meeting scheduled with Cynthia Curtis to discuss how we might approach the reading of Christmas stories to the children of Cabot Cove. She’d suggested the meeting when she left my house yesterday, and I’d agreed to it. She wanted Seth there, too, but he’d declined, claiming he had a busy patient load that morning.

It wasn’t easy summoning enthusiasm for a meeting, which I assumed was the prevailing feeling of most people in town involved with the festival. Initially, learning of Rory’s murder had put us all in shock. Now, twenty-four hours later, that shock had been replaced with a pervasive sense of gloom and depression.

But I knew that I, and anyone else, couldn’t let that dominate our lives. The festival was too important to have it ruined by any single event, no matter how tragic it might have been.