A Mother's Day Murder (Mt. Abrams Mysteries Book 1) (3 page)

The library did not actually have a park. It did have a small grassy area by the entrance, where the Garden Club had planted a bank of hydrangeas a few years ago, and had recently installed a picnic table.

I could see Sharon Butler coming around the corner. Sharon was young, in her early thirties, with a six-year-old son. She was considerably overweight, probably close to two hundred and fifty pounds, but she trotted up the hill with a smile and no apparent shortness of breath. “Honestly, Lynn, pavers aren’t so terrible. It gets really messy around there in the winter.”

That was obviously the wrong thing to say. Lynn and Mary Rose Reed were as close to archenemies as one got in Mt. Abrams. Their wildflower garden feud had been epic.

“Pavers would ice over, and that would mean salt being put down. Salt would get swept to the side, all over the hydrangeas, and would kill them off in just a few years. Do you really want to kill the hydrangeas?”

“Of course, not. So, you want me to join so I can become part of the anti-paver voting block?” Sharon, now within earshot, made a sympathetic face. Lynn’s strong-arm tactics were the stuff of legend.

Lynn leaned over to give me a quick hug. “Exactly. Meeting is Thursday at seven-thirty. In the firehouse. See you there.” She bounced up, waved at Sharon, and then disappeared as quickly as she had come.

Sharon laughed. “Did she recruit you? Pavers?” Sharon was very pretty, always perfectly made up, and her hair carefully colored and styled. She worked from home too, but managed to get herself dressed in coordinated outfits with matching accessories. Today her earrings and necklace complimented the blue in her cotton sweater. She also always wore perfume. I was a tad jealous.

I nodded. The rest of the moms materialized, and seconds later, the bus pulled to a stop. Tessa was first off the bus, of course. She liked being first. At anything and everything. I liked to think that having big sister fed into her competitive spirit.

David and Jordan Mitchell did not get off the bus. They were obviously hanging out at the Mt. Abrams Elementary School gym, along with all the other kids in the after-school program, including Shelly’s boys. The program ran until six. I had often seen Doug pull in as late as eight in the evening. I wondered what other last-minute arrangements he’d had to make.

Tessa lifted her face for a kiss and handed me her backpack.

“Good day?” I asked.

She nodded, standing patiently and waiting until Jerome got off the bus. Jerome’s mom, Jessica, dropped him off every morning, and Tessa and I walked him to Bev Sutter’s house every afternoon, who watched him until Jessica picked him up after she got off work. There were a fair number of stay-at-home moms in Mt. Abrams, but living barely thirty miles west of New York City made for a fairly high cost of living, and most of the families had both parents working.

Maggie came tearing down the hill, just as Serif hopped off the bus.

“Ellie, hold on a sec,” she said. I motioned Tessa and Jerome up the hill, and Serif fell in beside them.

“What?” I asked.

Maggie glanced around, smiled briefly as the rest of the moms drifted away, and leaned toward me. “Did you know that the Mitchell house is for sale?”

I stopped and stared at her. “For sale? Since when?”

“Since yesterday. Viv told me.”

Vivian Brewster was the local real estate agent. Just about every house bought or sold in Mt. Abrams was handled out of her office. She and Maggie, I knew, were not just neighbors but good friends. “Yesterday? Are you sure?”

Maggie nodded. “Yes. But get this. She told Doug she needed Lacey's signature on the contract, but he told her that he had been given power of attorney. He showed her paperwork. And there’s no mortgage. Everything was paid off a few months ago.”

“When her father died,” I muttered.

“Whose father?” Maggie asked.

“Lacey's. Her father died in February. And left a lot of money behind. Five million bucks.”

Maggie stopped and stared at me. “Her father died? You mean the one who’s supposedly sick in Buffalo?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why would Doug lie?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Lacey's mother still has a phone listing in Virginia, and when I called it yesterday, I got an answering machine.”

We had started walking again, and Maggie poked me in the ribs with her elbow. “You actually called her? What for?”

“I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see where she was. She dropped out of sight after Doug and Lacey’s wedding.”

“Maybe
she’s
in Buffalo?”

I shook my head, not convinced. “There’s something really odd here. And I think we need to find out what it is.”

I
had stopped eating
real food about five months ago.

Let me take that back. I stopped eating food that tasted good and satisfied my various sweet/salty/spicy urges five months ago. Now, I only ate stuff that was good for me, which is why I did not go out with Tessa and Cait for pizza, although I was sure Cait would have appreciated the moral support. I, quite simply, could not be trusted anywhere that pizza or pasta was served. I had pretty much zero willpower about pizza and pasta.

When Tessa was born, I was forty years old. I also weighed almost two hundred pounds. My second pregnancy was quite different from my first. Not only did I eat for pretty much the entire nine months, I continued to eat the following nine months. Being over forty, I did not expect the baby weight to fall off as easily as it had the first time around, but I really hadn’t counted on gaining
more
weight.

My marriage started to fall apart. I lost my job. Tessa was a bit whiney. Cait was a teenager—need I say more? I could often be found wandering up and down the aisles of the Stop and Shop, my cart loaded with frozen Sara Lee banana cream pies and bags of Oreos.

After Marc moved out and I started getting side jobs, I began to feel better about myself. When I finally took a cold, hard look at myself in the mirror, I decided drastic action needed to be taken. I joined a gym and tried different diets, with varying levels of success. Last year, when I could no longer kid myself about “baby weight”—after all, it had been years—I started walking every day with Shelly and Carol. My New Year’s resolution was to lose the last thirty pounds.

I was almost there.

I was never going to be a size eight. I don’t think I was a size eight
ever
. Not even when I was twelve. But my boobs were once again the only part of my body that noticeably stuck out, and I was happy with that.

So there I was, sitting in my kitchen, eating a cold poached chicken breast with a huge side salad and a single slice of cheddar cheese, when Shelly knocked briefly and came through the door.

She glanced around. “The girls?”

“Cait is going to France. Maybe for a while. She’s breaking the news to Tessa over pizza.”

Her shoulders slumped. “She’s going to France? Oh, Ellie, are you okay?”

I nodded and gulped down some lemon-infused water. “Not really, but I’ll cope. What’s going on?”

She sat down across from me and folded her hands. “Tell me about Lacey.”

I told her. Then I told her about what Maggie said. She looked thoughtful, nodding to herself.

“I saw Maggie earlier, and she told me what was going on, but I wanted to hear it directly from you. So, Lacey inherits millions, pays off her house, gives her husband power of attorney, then disappears?”

“To be honest, she didn’t exactly disappear. We just don’t know where she is,” I said. “And I can’t find out who inherited the money.” I’d spent most of the afternoon reading through that cozy mystery and had decided, after reading the sixth or seventh red herring the author threw on the page, that there was usually a very innocent explanation to everything.

Shelly tilted her head. “We know that Doug lied. Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he was embarrassed. Or caught off guard. I mean, we don’t know him at all, and here I was, in his face, asking questions.”

Shelly still looked skeptical. “You asked one perfectly innocent and easy question. Was Lacey all right? If there was an easy or innocent answer, why didn’t he give it?”

I got up, gathered my empty paper plate and napkin and threw them in the garbage. “I don’t know, Shel, but honestly, what can we do? We don’t know them at all. Maybe she goes off by herself all the time.”

It was odd that living in such a small community for almost a year the Mitchells managed to remain such a mystery. The boys did not exchange play dates. Lacey had made no close friendships or shared any type of personal information at all. We didn’t know her birthday. Or her favorite color. Or where she went every day between nine and noon. No one knew what Doug did all day, aside from putting on a suit and driving off every morning by eight-thirty, often returning quite late.

That was still okay. I mean, not everyone who lived in Mt. Abrams was as open and friendly as Shelly Goodwin or Carol Anderson. Or me.

I looked at Shelly. “So, what do you
think
happened?”

She frowned. “I guess I was hoping for a nice, juicy murder plot.”

I laughed. “Where do you think we are, Cabot Cove? Listen, I’m joining the Garden Club to help Lynn fend off the evil Mary Rose. Come with me?”

She sighed. “They meet Thursdays, right? Yes, I suppose. Is this about the pavers?”

“I prefer to think of it as the mission to save the hydrangeas from death by road salt.”

She stood up. “How can you support death by road salt? I’m in.” She sighed wistfully. “A murder would have been nice.”

I laughed again. “Not for Lacey.”

She laughed with me. “You’re right. When is the Cait thing happening?”

I shrugged. “She’s flying over for the interview in June. She’ll know by August. If she gets in, it’s two years. If not, she’ll be working at Pierre’s forever.”

“No, she’s a smart kid. She’ll figure something out. See you tomorrow.”

She closed the door behind her, and I finished cleaning up my kitchen. When Marc and I remodeled ten years ago, we debated as to whether to try to bring the kitchen back to its original 1875 glory. I spent five minutes researching the Victorian kitchen, then ordered extra-tall cabinets and granite countertops. There’s a lot to be said for keeping those important period details, but nobody wants three feet of counter space and a single cabinet for storage. We did find a killer vintage gas stove, complete with cast iron fittings and cute chrome knobs, but that was as authentic as we got.

The girls weren’t back yet. That meant there was probably ice cream involved. I glanced down at Boot. “Walk?”

She perked up her ears, and we went out the back door.

After the warm day, the cool evening air surprised me. May was a fickle month in New Jersey, tempting you with sunshine then reminding you that snow before Mother’s Day was not unheard of. I walked quickly toward the lake. About five minutes of this was all I was going to be able to take.

The Mitchell house was ahead of me. I headed towards it. The porch light was on, and there were a few interior lights on. I slowed as I got nearer. Was it possible to just take a peek inside?

I stopped myself. What was I doing? I may have been curious about Lacey, but not enough to turn me in to a Peeping Tom. Boot caught the scent of something and took off, pulling me up the Mitchell’s driveway, past the wraparound porch to the detached garage in back.

The garage had been built later, of course, probably in the forties, and it had two doors that still opened manually, just like my garage. One of the doors was standing open, and I could see Doug’s Camry parked between rakes hung on the interior wall and a row of garbage cans. Boot was heading straight for Doug’s car until a small dark shape appeared out of nowhere and shot past us. Boot reversed suddenly, spinning me around and practically pulling my arm off.

As I turned, I got a glimpse of the garage interior. Something struck me as odd.

I jerked at Boot’s leash and moved closer. I glanced at the house. The last thing I needed was Doug coming out and finding me prowling through his garbage cans and gardening tools.

I skirted the Camry and stopped.

There was a great big nothing where Lacey's Suburban should have been.

Doug said he’d driven her to the train.

I backed out slowly and turned again to look at the house.

If he had driven her, why was her car gone?

That made two lies. In barely three sentences.

Doug was starting to look a bit dicey.

W
hen the girls came home
, Tessa was not happy. She stood in the middle of the living room, arms crossed defiantly, chin down, pouting. She was a mini-me, the same dark, curly hair, big brown eyes, and thick, straight brows. She was built like me too, skinny legs, narrow hips, and sturdy around the middle. There was always a chance she would grow into a long-waisted nymph like Cait, but I doubted it. My prediction was that she’d be carrying around a fireplug body just like mine for the rest of her life.

“I don’t think Cait should go anywhere,” she said with conviction. “She won’t like it in France. She likes it here.”

I pasted on a smile. “Tessa, this is a great chance for Cait to live someplace new and really cool, meet lots of amazing people, and she can work at what she loves.”

Tessa glared. “Well, I hope they don’t pick her. I hope they like somebody else better.”

I put on my stern face. “Tessa, that’s being mean. This is something your sister really wants. We should support her and hope for the best.”

“Daddy won’t let her go.”

I glanced up at Cait, who stood behind her sister and rolled her eyes. “Daddy would never keep your sister from doing something she really wanted,” I said.

Tessa was not giving up. “When I see him tomorrow, I’m going to tell him, and he’ll make Cait stay home.”

I sighed. Poor Tessa. Poor Cait.

Actually, poor Marc. He really was a good dad, spending lots of time with Tessa, even taking her on vacation with him to his family’s cabin in Maine every summer. His relationship with Cait was different, of course. Father-daughter things were difficult under the best of circumstances, and there was a lot of baggage they were still filtering through. Cait loved her father and spent time with him. She had understood that although Marc had been the one to leave, every marriage—and divorce—was about two people.

“Maybe Cait can go with you and Daddy tomorrow. What do you think, Cait?”

Cait rolled her eyes again. “I’ll tell Dad about France, and we can all talk about it together, okay?”

Tessa sniffed. “He won’t let her go,” she said again, then turned and marched out and up the stairs.

I looked sympathetically at Cait. “So, I guess this was not a fun girl’s night?”

Cait threw herself into a chair. “How can one little kid be so smart? She came up with three really good arguments for me staying before she went into her
because I said so
mode.”

“Well, let’s face it, you both had exceptionally brilliant parents. I’d talk to your father tonight and let him know what’s going on. If he gets blindsided by Tessa, he won’t be happy.”

She nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.” She was quiet. I picked up my book and started reading again.

“What if they don’t pick me?” she asked finally, in a very small voice.

I looked over at her. “Baby, they would be complete fools not to pick you. You’re a Renaissance woman, for God’s sakes. You speak, what, three languages besides English, you’re a literature wiz who’s also a science geek, and you can talk the leaves off a tree. How could they not jump at the chance to have you on their team?”

She smiled crookedly. “Thanks, Mom.” She pulled herself up and went upstairs.

I tried to get back into my book, but couldn’t concentrate. Even though I read books every day for a living, I always chose reading over television at night to relax.

I closed my book and started turning off the lights. I looked out the window and over to the Mitchell house. The porch light was off. The first floor was dark. A blue flicker in an upstairs window told me that someone was watching television. Was it Doug?

No, it wasn’t, because there was a light on in the next window, and a tall shadow crossed it. Again. And then again.

Someone was pacing back and forth.

I watched for ten minutes. What was I expecting? That Doug Mitchell would race down the stairs, across the street, and down the road to my front door, where he would tearfully confess that Lacey was stashed in the basement behind the old coal bin?

I shook myself, turned and went upstairs.

I
t was not
unusual for my mother to call me at seven in the morning. In fact, it was typical. She knew I worked during the day, afternoons were usually spent with Tessa, then came dinner. Since my mother was usually asleep by eight-thirty, mornings were her best time. It wasn’t
my
best time, but for Mom, I didn’t have to be a shining star.

After my father died, Mom sold the house and moved into an assisted living facility. It made sense. We had already been joking about her faulty memory before Dad became sick. I think he convinced her, in those last awful days, that trying to live alone in a three-bedroom, two-story colonial on half an acre was too much for her. I had felt a momentary cringe at the thought of my childhood home being taken from me, but my younger brother, Ted, finished it for me when he drew me aside after the funeral.

“Listen, Ellie, I’m in Chicago,” he said. “I can’t help out here. Do you want to be the one running every time Mom can’t find the remote?”

Mom had a large room in a very nice facility where they sang Broadway show tunes around a grand piano in the lobby every evening after dinner. They also organized weekly trips to Walmart and monthly excursions to museums, local theater, and craft shows. My mother loved her new life. No cooking, no cleaning, and someone else to drive her around.

I had to admit, I was a little jealous.

So when the phone rang in my house at seven-oh-five, I always knew who it was, even without caller ID.

“Hey, Mom, how are you feeling?“ I always led with that question, so we could get the complaining portion of the conversation out of the way early.

“Well, you know, my knee.” Ah yes, the knee. Cait jokingly referred to it as a “sports injury,” as Mom got it when she fell trying to wrestle a Le Creuset Dutch oven marked down to only $150.00 from another equally determined customer at T.J.Maxx.

“Don’t take too much Tylenol, Mom.”

“Why, it might kill me?” I could picture my mother on her phone. She did not have a cell phone. The technological sophistication had proved too much for her very early in the game. She had a landline in her apartment and a very simple answering machine, and if she felt cheated of the latest marvels of Android and Apple, she didn’t show it.

She had a phone chair. It was the same phone chair she’d had in the old house, as well as the same phone table. When she was on the phone, she did not watch television, eat, or do her beloved crossword puzzles. She was all about the phone call. She would sit upright, both hands gripping the phone, eyes closed in complete concentration.

“A little gas last night,” she said and sighed. “I don’t know why I eat broccoli.”

I poured myself some coffee. I had always managed to combine phone conversations with other activities. “High in antioxidants, Mom.”

“High in fiber. Mr. Milano almost blasted us out of bingo. What are we doing for Mother’s Day?”

“I thought I’d pick you up early; we could have brunch here, then go to the Arboretum. They’re having an orchid show.”

“I killed the last one I bought,” she said sadly.

“I know. You don’t have to buy one. We can just look.”

“That sounds nice. I hope my knee is better by then.”

“It’s a few days away, Mom. No tennis and you should be fine.”

“You’re not funny.” She sniffed. “How are my darlings?”

“Caitlyn has a chance to go to France. We’re all very excited.”

“They don’t like us there,” Mom pointed out. “And there are bombs.”

“Mom, there are bombs everywhere.”

“They killed all those poor journalists.”

I sipped my coffee, thinking fast. “Mom, she won’t be in the journalism district.”

“Oh?”

“She’ll be in the literature district. Nobody gets bombed there.”

“Oh. Well then, that’s fine. Maybe Ted can fly out?”

Sometimes I shifted gears as quickly as Mom, and sometimes it took me a bit longer. After trying to picture Ted in the literature district, I took three steps back in the conversation. “You mean fly here for Mother’s Day? I’ll ask him. He and Calvin would love the orchids.”

“Why, is that a gay thing?”

My mother had a bit of difficulty with my brother coming out. She’d been raised in a strict Catholic Italian household, where homosexuality meant an immediate ticket to hell. She became gradually tolerant, even as her grasp on reality began to waver, so the ingrained mistruths of her childhood often became fuddled.

“No, Mom, it’s not a gay thing. It’s a cool and beautiful thing.” Boot came and put her paw on my thigh. She seemed to know when Mom was on the phone and always offered moral support. “When is Walmart day?”

“Tomorrow. I need sunglasses. That damn Justine Caldwell keeps stealing mine.”

“Are you sure you aren’t misplacing them?” My mother was robbed of some personal belonging at least twice a month, and Justine was the usual culprit. Having met Justine, I doubted her guilt, as the poor woman was confined to a wheelchair and couldn’t steal a cotton ball without upping her oxygen intake.

“No. She took them. I wish I had enough money to buy a nice pair.”

“Mom, I told you, you have plenty of money. Just ask the aide. You have a spending account, remember?”

“I think Justine stole it.”

Boot whimpered and wagged her stub of a tail. “Mom, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you Friday.”

“Okay, dear. Give my love to Marc.”

That was always the saddest part. Even though Marc and I divorced before she started forgetting things, she had decided in her heart of hearts we were still married, and I’d long ago given up trying to talk her out of it.

Tessa came into the kitchen, face wrinkled with sleep. “Why does Grandma always call so early?”

“Because she knows that I’m usually not doing anything too important, and I can talk to her.”

“Can I have some breakfast?”

“Of course. Cereal? Toast? One perfect scrambled egg?”

She slumped into her chair. “Cheerios. Do we have strawberries?”

“Yes. Coffee with that? A side of fries?”

She put her head between her hands in mock despair. “Mom, I’m not treating you like a waitress. I’m not tall enough to reach the cabinet yet!”

“Well, okay. Start growing. It’s time you started earning your keep around here. Do a few chores, lift that bale, tote that hay.”

She looked at me between her splayed fingers. “Is that a movie thing I never heard of or a Broadway thing?”

I poured her cereal in a bowl and grabbed the milk and berries out of the fridge. “Both. I think we have to start your classical movie education.”

She groaned. “No, Mom, please.”

“Cait loved classical movie nights.”

She chewed. “Yeah, well, Cait’s weird.” She swallowed. “Did you know that Jordan’s grandpa got killed?”

I tried to look completely casual. “Jordan Mitchell? No, I didn’t know.”

“Well, yesterday I tried to tell him I was sorry his grandpa was sick, and that my grandma sometimes didn’t even know who I was, and he got really angry. He said his grandpa got killed.”

I swallowed my coffee very carefully. “Really? He must have been very upset.”

“He was. Mrs. Winship took him to the nurse because he started to cry. I felt kinda bad.”

“Well, baby, it wasn’t your fault. You were trying to be kind.”

She shrugged and finished her cereal in silence. Then she went upstairs and left me with Boot. I looked down at her soft brown eyes, then I stood up and looked out the window at the Mitchell house.

What the heck was going on there? Where was Lacey Mitchell?

“
I
think
you’re being ridiculous,” Carol said. We were done with all the hills, and were on the walking path around the lake. This was my favorite part of our walk, through the tall oaks that rimmed the water. Since the path was maintained by the county, the walking trail was wide and well tended, no ruts or sizable rocks to contend with.

“I think the whole thing stinks,” Shelly said.

“Maybe,” Maggie said. “But what can we do about it?”

“I was thinking about talking to the police,” I said.

“And tell them what?” Carol asked.

I had no answer. I’d been running stuff over in my mind, and I had no idea what I thought, let alone what to do.

“Last night, you were convinced we were all overreacting,” Shelly said. “Now you want to call the police? What happened?”

“Doug spent most of the night pacing around his bedroom.”

Shelly raised an eyebrow. “And we know that how?”

I made a face. “I couldn’t sleep. Every time I got up, the light was on, and I could see him pacing.”

“Still,” Carol said. “That means nothing.”

“This morning Tessa told me that she tried to talk to Jordan about the sick grandpa, and Jordan got upset and said
his
grandpa got killed.” I looked around. “And I just happened to be walking Boot past the Mitchell house last night, and she was following something into the garage, and the one door happened to be open, and I saw that Lacey's car was missing.”

“Grandpa got killed?” Maggie echoed.

“Lacey’s car is missing?” Carol asked. “Now that sounds like something.”

“Let’s look at this,” I said. “Lacey’s father died suddenly, or was possibly killed, and left a lot of money to someone, maybe Lacey, because for some reason the wife wasn’t even mentioned in the obituary. At all. Lacey is gone, and her husband lied about her whereabouts. Her car is gone. And he told us he took her to the train station. We heard him say that. Her sons are really upset about something.”

“You might have something,” Carol said slowly. “It’s starting to get more complicated. Maybe you could just, you know, talk to a detective or something? In fact, you could go and see Sam Kinali.”

“Who?” I asked.

She carefully stepped over a stray tree branch. “He’s a detective with Lawrence Township. I’ve met him a few times. He presented a few programs at the main library, and he seemed very friendly. In fact, I’m closing today and don’t have to be a work until four, so I’ll go with you.”