An Owl's Whisper (50 page)

Jess felt miles away from cracking the case, but he’d made progress. He’d get there if he kept plugging away. He stared at the yellow paper. His fingers found the quarter from the street. “Heads it’s murder, Tails suicide,” he muttered. He tossed the coin into the air and caught it. It was tails. Jess circled the word
Probably
in the last line on his yellow pad.

He mentally sifted the facts every way he could. He’d ruled out some possibilities, but to solve this murder he’d need to rule some in. Determine if his forensic coin was showing heads or tails. He hoped his eye was sharp enough to tell them apart.

At noon, he needed a break. Maybe have lunch, see what Carrie was up to.

On the drive home, Jess reckoned that unless he could explain how Crickette could’ve killed herself, Eva was in the soup. She admitted stopping to get the Conroy’s mail, so she’d been at the crime scene alone. Near the time of the murder. All circumstantial, but damning nonetheless. He’d have to question Eva. Maybe put the heat on her. He hated the thought of that.

It was Monday—that night he’d have spaghetti for dinner—and the tangy aroma of tomato, garlic, and basil filled Carrie’s kitchen when Jess arrived. After a kissed
hello
, he stirred the simmering saucepan. He brought a spoonful of the sauce to his nose and inhaled. “Dang that smells tasty. I do like my Monday nights.” He took his usual chair at the kitchen table.

“You should have called. I’d have had a sandwich ready.” Carrie opened the fridge door. “Looks like it’s liverwurst or liverwurst.”

“Liverwurst’s fine. On that rye bread, if you got it.” Acting nonchalant, Jess hummed the Toreador Song from
Carmen
, tapping his finger on the table to the beat.

Carrie shook her head and pulled the only loaf she had from the breadbox. “Jessie, we both know darned well you didn’t come home to serenade me. If you want to talk, fire away.”

“Come on dearie, can’t a man come home just to gawk at his pretty wife? Without her suspectin’ him? Wasn’t goin’ to bother you with shop talk, but since you put it that way, maybe I will.” He walked over and gave her a gentle swat on the rump. “Don’t wanna disappoint you.”

“You’re lucky I have a high tolerance for foolishness. So?…What’s up?”

Jess took out his sheet of yellow paper. “Been tryin’ to savvy just what it is I know and don’t know about Crickette’s death.” He put on his spectacles. “For now, I’ve boiled it down to three suspects. There’s Harry—he’s got motive but not opportunity. There’s another suspect I’m not gonna name. They might have a motive. Maybe acted as accomplice. But I doubt in my heart they could or would do anything like this. I just—”

“Now you got me all curious.” Carrie put a plate with his sandwich in front of Jess. “Ain’t proper to bring up stuff you don’t plan to finish talking about.”

“Forget suspect number two. What’s really eatin’ me is a third suspect. Crickette herself.”

“Crickette?” Carrie looked incredulous. “Thought you and Doc agreed this wasn’t suicide.”

“We did. Before. Can’t see how she could have done it herself. But if I could, it’d be the simplest explanation. And I wouldn’t need to suspect anyone else.”

“Simplest is usually right. But why would a suicide worry about covering her tracks?”

“I’ve learned some things about Crickette.” Jess bit his lip. “Dirty things. Like tryin’ to set somebody up. And that ain’t all. Guess it boils down to this feelin’ in my gut that maybe she did do what facts say she couldn’t have.”

“You know, Jessie, they used to think the earth was flat. There’s two kinds of facts. Ones you know and ones you only think you know. Those last kind can really get you in hot water.” Carrie unfolded a red and white check napkin and covered Jess’ sandwich with it. “What kind of sandwich you got under the napkin?”

Jess looked surprised. “Well, liverwurst on rye, I reckon.”

Carrie pulled away the napkin. The bread was white. “You reckoned because you asked for rye. Asking for don’t mean getting. Turns out the only bread I have is white.”

Jess stroked his moustache with his thumb. “Sounds like you’re sayin’ a smart sheriff would be figurin’ it don’t
look
like Crickette killed herself rather than that she didn’t.”

Carrie grinned. “At this point,
don’t look like
sounds safer to me than
didn’t
.”

“Yeah, safety first.” He took a bite of sandwich. “So, you tellin’ me the earth ain’t flat?”

Carrie threw the napkin at him. “Yeah, Arthur Godfrey said so on the radio today.”

After lunch, Jess left the house and headed for the Chandler place. It was early enough that the girls wouldn’t be home from school. And Stan would be working. His lunchtime talk with Carrie had him wondering what he
really
did know about Crickette’s death. Eva had been closer to her in some ways than Max. Maybe she was hiding something. Or maybe she held the key to the case without knowing it. Either way, he had to talk to her. Alone.

Monday had always been Eva’s baking day, and the yeasty aroma of rising bread dough filled the kitchen when Jess arrived. “I was just in the neighborhood,” he said. “Thought I’d drop by to see how things are goin’.”

Eva glanced suspiciously at him. “Cup of coffee, Jess?”

“’Preciate it.” He took a seat at the corner of the kitchen table that wasn’t stacked with bowls and canisters or dusted with stray flour.

Eva poured the coffee and went back to brushing melted butter on the four domes of dough bulging out of their bread pans. “A sheriff’s surprise visit makes me worry there’s been some cattle rustling and I’m suspect number one.” She noted Jess’ nervous smile. “If you’ve come to arrest me, at least make yourself useful. Open the oven door so I can get this bread in.”

Jess opened the door. “Careful, don’t burn yourself,” he said as Eva put the first loaf in.

“I’m OK. While I get the next one, use my oven stick to push the loaf all the way to the back.” She handed Jess a yard stick-sized piece of maple. “Hurry before all my heat escapes.”

Jess pushed the loaf to the back of the oven, then he bolted upright. “Hot doggies, Eva, that’s it!” he yelled, hugging her. “That’s how ya tell heads from tails.”

Eva blushed and stepped back. “Such a celebration over putting bread in an oven? I’m afraid to think what happens when I take it out.” She set another loaf into the oven. “Now push this one to the back. A bit more calmly, or you’ll make it fall.”

Jess shoved the loaf deep into the oven and handed Eva the stick. He called over his shoulder as he ran out, “You can do the rest, can’t ya? I got a coin to flip.”

Jess roared back into town with his siren blaring. He screeched to a halt outside his office and threw open the patrol car trunk. The piece of wooden molding he’d found at Crickette’s crime scene was there where he’d left it two weeks before. He snatched it and stormed into the office. He locked the door and went right to the evidence cabinet. Jess took Max’s snake gun out and checked to be sure it was unloaded. He cocked the gun, and with his left hand he grasped the muzzle, holding it at arm’s length. The shotgun’s business end was about two feet from his chest. Looking down the double barrel, he gripped one end of the wood molding in his right hand and rested the other end on the trigger. Jess took a deep breath and pushed.

Off the Hook

On a steamy August Sunday afternoon, Eva, Stan, Jess and Carrie sat on the Chandlers’ front porch. The women swept slowly back and forth on the glider swing, serenaded by the suspending chains’ chirping chorus. Eva pressed her glass of iced lemonade to her cheek. “Warm as it is, I think a cool drink is the only thing we’ve got over the chicken simmering on my stove.”

“That’s pretty near right, ma’am.” Jess took a swig of cold beer. “Still, could be worse.” He was thinking back to the previous February, the day he figured out how Crickette could have killed herself without an accomplice. After that, he’d quietly misplaced the piece of wood molding he’d found at the crime scene, the scrap of pink paper from Crickette’s hand, and the pages mentioning Eva in Crickette’s notebook. He’d never told Eva about suspecting she’d been involved in a murder. Or how Crickette had apparently tried to make it look like she had. No point in that. For Max’s sake, he hadn’t pursued the suicide angle either. Though he didn’t exactly lie, Jess never discouraged folks who figured he was hot on Harry Scurfman’s trail and that some day he’d trip the varmint up. Harry’s heart attack and death in April made everything easy. “Darn snake slithered out of it,” is what Lem Hickok said, and Hooker County folks agreed, reckoning the story of Crickette Conroy’s murder died with him. Jess hadn’t fought that notion. It allowed Max some peace when he moved back to Chicago in May. And gave everyone else closure, too. Since none of that squared with a good lawman’s code, Jess announced in June that he wouldn’t stand for reelection. “It’s a younger man’s job,” was all he’d said.

Stan worried that the color in Eva’s cheeks was more the heat than the fact that she was four months into her pregnancy. “You doin’ OK, hon?” He fanned her face with a newspaper.

Eva beamed. “Not just OK—I’m Okey-dokey.”

Carrie took Eva’s hand. “You surely are that.” She stopped the swing to peer into her eyes like there might be secrets hidden deep inside them. “Eva, I’ve never seen you look better. Happier.” Carrie looked away and sighed. “1957. Such a year—starting off with a murder and set to end with new life.”

Stan tapped his beer bottle to Jess’. “To new life. It’s something, all right.”

Just then Françie ran from the house with Cat in hot pursuit. She slipped behind the porch swing and threw her arms around her mother’s shoulders.

“You better not,” Cat growled at her sister.

Eva turned to look Françie in the eyes. “Better not what?”

“Tell,” Françie whispered in Eva’s ear.

“Tell what, kiddo?” Eva said.

“Squealer!” Cat yelled and crossed her arms.

Eva froze Cat with a glare. She stood and took Françie’s hand. “Come,
Bijou
. We’ll walk with your sister and see what’s up.” She took the sunglasses from Stan’s pocket and put them on.

Eva walked between the girls, holding each one’s hand. They went to the teeter-totter Stan had built in the shade of the towering elm behind the house. With the girls at each end of the board, Eva tended the fulcrum to keep the seesawing slow.

“I did promise not to tell.” Françie looked defiantly at Cat. “Not to tell
Daddy
.” She stuck out her tongue and turned back to Eva. “Last night we were playing with that arrowhead Daddy got you for Christmas in Belgium. So he sees us and says, ‘Put that away. You’ll lose it.’” She winced. “Well, we didn’t, and this morning it’s gone. We looked all over. He’s gonna kill us.”

“You didn’t mind your father,” Eva said. “I’d say he has a right to be upset.”

“But not to paddle us real hard,” Cat pleaded, “That’s why we can’t tell him, Françie.”

Eva smiled. “Your father has never paddled you too hard, much less killed you.” She sighed. “Besides, knowing you did something wrong and carrying it as a dark secret can be much worse than getting it over and done with. That’s something even mothers have to learn.”

“You lose stuff, too, Mama?” Françie asked.

“I used to say I lost my childhood. But in wartime, I suppose that’s true for many other children as well. What’s worse is to grow up hiding from something you’ve done. Then what’s lost is you.” Eva held the seesaw steady and gazed for a moment into the distance. “I don’t want that for you,
Mon Bijoux
. Come, sit with me on the grass.” She pointed to the base of the tree.

Eva sat between her two girls. She took a deep breath. “I’ve told you about Franka, the goose so tiny she looked like a wren. You remember don’t you?” The girls nodded
yes
. “As I said before, Franka secretly helped the geese for a time when they took over the forest. Doing that, she betrayed the other animals there. It was bad. Though it took her a while, when she saw the geese were evil, she did turn against them and worked to throw them out. But after the geese were gone and even when she had a family of her own, Franka couldn’t forget what she’d done. The black secret of her past followed her wherever she went. Whatever she did. And she feared it more than death.” Eva was glad for Stan’s sunglasses—the girls didn’t see her tears. “Then one day everything changed. Franka told her husband what she’d done, and he held her and kissed her and said, ‘Honey, you’re off the hook.’ And off the hook is how she felt—as if the darkness in her past had vanished in a magician’s puff of smoke. It was the first day of her new life.”